


Senseless Years

by Experimental



Series: Forbidden Colors [3]
Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Backstory, Friendship/Love, Guilt, Multi, Paranormal, Religious Themes & References, Self-Harm, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-27
Updated: 2008-04-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 61,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experimental/pseuds/Experimental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tsuzuki never knew his father. All he left behind was a sepia photograph. But he knew that the man's eyes had been the same purple as his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Meiji period ended and Taisho began in 1912. The date of General Nogi's suicide in the same year has been fudged a little to fit the timeline.  
> Original characters have been designated by a single Roman letter in the style of the literature from that time.

  
Senseless years thunder by  
Millions are willing to give their lives for you  
Does nothing live on?   


  


* * *

Tsuzuki Asato never knew his father. That man had disappeared sometime after he was born, when Asato was too young to remember; and even before then, others told him, that man had rarely come around.

According to his mother he had died in the first months of the Russo-Japanese War, but this did not account for his whereabouts in the four years before the war started. It was mostly the reason she gave others for his absence. They would ask no more questions of her then, although they would wonder if her misfortune was really a coincidence. Her husband, Mr Tsuzuki, who fathered her daughter Ruka in his short life, was confirmed killed in combat in the last year of the Sino-Japanese War before that. It would seem she was rather unlucky indeed to lose two loves to war on foreign soil. However, Asato's great-aunt, Ruka's grandmother, and his mother's teenage brother maintained that Asato's father left his mother for greener pastures, as they put it, which left Asato with the impression for many years, until his mother corrected him, that his father was a cowherd. They pointed to the fact that he had never married Asato's mother, and made a legitimate son of the child he sired with her. They said it was proof he had something to hide. Still, at least outwardly, the family's respect for the man who had comforted her in her grief grew as they came to believe he too had died honorably for his country. They did not wonder why a man who was so obviously not a soldier to look at him would have left to fight, because the whole of his past had been carefully shrouded in mystery. No one truly knew what he had done with his life—not even Asato's mother. All they knew was that he had been very wealthy, and had shared none of that wealth with their family. Sometimes his mother believed so strongly in her own story of his disappearance it was as though it were truth; and Asato kept silent when he saw how it comforted her. He, however, drew strength from the belief that his father still existed somewhere in the world, beyond Tokyo perhaps, maybe even in the strange foreign lands with their strangely dressed people portrayed in picture books.

As a young boy, he took comfort in the photograph of his parents that sat in a place of honor in the humble family shrine, right next to the portrait of the late Mr Tsuzuki. It was the only picture that existed of his father, so they paid no heed that his mother was in the photograph as well, and never thought the presence of her image in that sacred alcove might bear ill omen. Asato enjoyed his mother's stories about the man even more than the fairy tales his grandmother told him, even though it soon became obvious even his mother knew very little about the man she had loved. In his mind, the man was an adventurer, maybe a prince of some sort, who traveled all over the world exploring the wild jungles of darkest Africa and defeating foreign schemers with his charming witticisms, like the heroes of Western movies. Surely it was only because of his infamy that he was forced to leave his mother, Asato preferred to believe.

He looked like an intelligent and worldly man. In that photograph he wore trousers and a frock coat—a contrast to his mother's kimono that was not at all upsetting or incongruous. His hair was short and slicked back, and he held himself with a proud and regal posture. He looked much older than his mother, who had been in her mid-twenties when she gave birth to Asato, with his tired face and faint laugh lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth. He had a kind face, however, and Asato imagined jealously how full of laughter their small and quiet house would be had that man stayed. It was only a sepia photograph, but he knew from his mother's constant praises that the man's eyes were purple just like his own. She loved Asato dearly for that trait, which she always said reminded her of his father.

Sometimes tears appeared in her eyes when she said this, though she smiled.

And he could only take her word, as the only thing he could remember from those nebulous days of infancy was the man's gentle and impenetrable smile. The rest was a hazy shadow, a dark and featureless figure constantly recorded in backlighting into his subconscious. And maybe even that, he wondered, was nothing more than a wistful dream.

* * *

Ever since he was a young boy, Asato knew he was different physically from other boys his age. It was not just the peculiar color of his eyes, which would occasionally cause others to stare at him as his mother led him down the street, that made him so. The queer fact was that when he scraped his knee or elbow while playing, his wounds would heal with remarkable speed, the skin sometimes returning to normal within a day, and there were none of the usual childhood scars to be found on his body. Neither could he ever remember being ill. While the other boys on his street bore scratches from their tumbles that were red for weeks, or contracted measles and were pockmarked long after they recovered, his fair skin remained as whole and unmarred as the day he was born—if anything, perhaps even more perfect.

It was not a condition that particularly worried Asato or his mother. Instead he was thankful for his unique trait, and felt somewhat sorry for others whose bodies made them suffer not only their physical ailments but also the embarrassment that came with them. Those weak bodies that made their bearers suffer were to him like cages without keys, and it tortured him to think there was no way he could free those people trapped in them from their pain. He could not predict that what made him special and fortunate would ever be cause for ridicule, though he supposed it was only natural for others to envy it. Indeed, it never crossed his mind that there might not be others who shared that trait with him.

It was his sister Ruka, his elder by seven years, who taught him otherwise. She scolded him once for making light of his condition and told him that what he had was a unique gift that others would not understand. What stayed with Asato, however, was not what she said but how she said it, as though that unique gift made her feel ashamed and even afraid.

Asato loved his sister—loved her more dearly than anyone else in the world, even, if he had to choose one over the other, more dearly than he loved his mother—so when he saw how his comments had shamed Ruka, he vowed never to speak capriciously of that gift again. From then on, his unique gift would be a secret kept between himself and his sister and his mother. Asato did not think to question Ruka's motives for scolding him thus. Surely, he thought, his sister only raised her voice against him to protect him.

More than that, however, he hated more than anything to see Ruka suffer, especially on his account. She had a slight frame that always made her appear small and frail no matter how tall she grew or how much she ate, and her large dark eyes carried an expression of perpetual sadness and fatigue on even the brightest days. Even this deceptive appearance of fragility only added to her beauty in a strange way, just as one can't help but appreciate more a spider's web sprinkled with raindrops. Like a tenuous spider's thread, Ruka's slightest displeasure moved him to such pity and admiration simultaneously that he ached in his heart for her and for her happiness. So it seemed to Asato early in life that it was not she who should be saddled with protecting him, but rather he would make it his lifelong duty to protect her.

* * *

Theirs was a poor family. That much Asato knew simply by looking at others around him. No one in their family owned more than a few sets of clothes at any one time, aside from those things Asato's father had given them, which his mother deemed too precious for everyday use. But they were never wanting for much. Though she lived simply now, on what odd jobs she could find in addition to the money from the government for her late husband's sacrifice, their mother was an educated woman, and she instilled in her children an appreciation for the written word and a keen interest in learning about the world around them. Before Asato was old enough to attend school, he listened to Ruka read the latest news and serials aloud at the breakfast table as his mother nodded over her stitching and occasionally corrected a reading, and let his mind wander. Sometimes he would think of his father accomplishing this or that which made the headlines, if he could not think of what the real news-maker would look like. The written word, even if only spoken to him by another, became a way to escape his uneventful childhood with its dull chores—though come dinner time, when Ruka returned from school to the aromas of boiling potato stew and rice, his own return to the home where he was most content was easy and instantaneous.

They seemed to have a good life in the city. So it came as some surprise to Asato when, when he was still too young to attend school, the three that made up his family's household moved to a developing neighborhood on the outskirts of town, where rice paddies and simple wooden houses competed with paved roads and telegraph poles, and oxen carts with horse-drawn cabs and the trains that stopped a few times a day at the tiny station. Though the modern inventions of bustling Tokyo encroached year by year, theirs remained a stubbornly old-fashioned town, with prices that reflected such a way of life. Asato's mother was convinced it would be a better place to raise her children than the streets of the big city, where mobbings were a daily occurrence and childhood innocence passed as swiftly as a branch caught in the current of the Sumida River.

So Asato looked forward to the start of school in this quiet town. His curiosity had already been piqued for some time by his older sister Ruka's stories of her own experiences at middle school. Those around him expressed their high expectations for his success in academics when they saw his precociousness, or the kindness he exhibited toward all of God's creation. Would he grow up to be a man of science, and raise his family to a position of wealth and prestige as a doctor of medicine? Or perhaps he would join the police force and come to the aid of others through the pursuit of justice and civil order. Perhaps, too, even the public career of a novelist was not entirely out of the question for the outgoing and quick-witted boy, in this budding democratic age. Whichever the case, however, the Asato of the present, for his part, despite the unswerving love of his mother and sister, was simply eager and desperate to experience the world outside of home—a world like the one Ruka went away to every day which he was not privy to, surrounded by peers with the same interests, with all the knowledge in existence at his fingertips.

That was the expectation he held in his heart and in his bright smile when his mother saw him off the first day. As he walked down the dusty lane dotted with budding cherries and scattering plums in his best suit of clothes, a Western shirt and trousers, he grinned to himself and thought of the schoolyard pleasures that he was sure would be his throughout the years to follow.

When he arrived, however, the other boys laughed behind their hands and whispered to one another in voices still loud enough for him to hear about his appearance. Glancing around at his classmates, Asato instantly felt very out of place. All of the boys and girls in his classroom were wearing kimono. In fact, the only one beside himself who was not was their teacher. To add insult to this embarrassment, none of the students would talk to him or make eye contact when he looked their way. Every once in a while, he felt some girl's stare fixated on him, and would turn to smile only to have her look away and pretend unsuccessfully that she had not been staring. It must have been his style of dress that made him stand out, he told himself, even though it was really his face at which they had been looking.

He told his mother when she asked him about his day with the cool, collected air of a scientist testing a hypothesis that if he wore Japanese clothes to class the next day the problem would be resolved, so certain was he that it was his Western clothing that had set him apart from the boys and girls of this small neighborhood, rather than some other reminder of his father entirely.

But the other students' aloofness and twittering continued even then; and when he tried to approach other boys over lunch they would flash him smiles that were anything but genuine or apologetic as they made some weak excuse to move away.

It was agony for the boy to see all his hopes for the school year be dashed and come to nothing so soon. The young Asato racked his brain but could not be sure what it was he could have done to deserve such treatment, until an older boy, about eight or nine years old, who seemed to have a large following of companions approached him in the schoolyard some time later and said, "You got funny eyes, don't you?" Until then, Asato had forgotten just how different his eyes were from everyone else's.

"I guess," he said, uncomfortable under the older boy's scrutinizing gaze. He shrugged. "I've had them all my life."

To his surprise the older boy laughed—but it was a kind laugh, a genuine sort of laugh like he was amused by Asato's answer. "Did you guys hear that?" he said to his friends. "He said he's had them all his life." He turned back to Asato and made as though to push Asato's hair out of his face for a better look, but stopped himself, as though he were suddenly afraid to touch Asato. "Where d'you suppose you get eyes like that?" he said instead.

"My mother says I got them from my father."

"What, you mean you don't know?"

"What d'you know, this guy's a bastard!" one of the older boy's companions laughed, slapping the shoulder of the boy next to him, and another joined in: "Bet 'is dad's a demon. Only demons got eyes 'at color."

But the older boy's face screwed up when he heard that, and he looked just as ashamed as Asato felt. "You morons. Shut up, all of you," he told his friends, and to Asato's surprise they did. "Don'tcha know there ain't no such thing as demons?"

The older boy introduced himself as B. Despite the way he had told off his companions, his manner with Asato seemed anything but curt or insincere. He had the type of gaze that made its target seem like the only person in the world, and his smile was very warm and kind when he asked Asato's name.

"Asato," B said, turning the name over in his mouth, "how'd you like to have lunch with us, then?"

B's friends protested, but Asato did not hear them. He was too pleased to hear them. Of course, what boy his age would not have liked nothing more than to have lunch with the most popular boy in the entire elementary school? It was not the kind of offer someone in Asato's position could afford to question, nor did he want to. He accepted, and felt like he was on cloud nine all day, because all through lunch it had seemed as though B's attention had been on Asato alone. B had even confided in him that he had no doubt they would become fast friends.

* * *

Though the blossoms had barely scattered from the cherry trees, it seemed to the young Asato at last that school life was beginning to look up. He did well in the classroom and was often called upon by his teacher to answer questions, and at lunchtime looked forward to being in the company of B, who had a way of speaking to him like he was the only one in his circle of friends that truly mattered. Even the other boys who had first made fun of him, seeing this, were kind to Asato; and it did not bother Asato to think that maybe they were only pretending to be so because they feared falling from B's favor. Moreover, Ruka and Asato's mother were delighted to see him so contented, and above all he did not want anything to ruin what happiness they gained from his happiness.

Slowly, however, Asato's standing with B began to change. The longer Asato was in his company, it seemed, the more comfortable B felt making comments about Asato—comments he had once chastised his followers for making themselves, about Asato's eyes and his clothes and mannerisms, and his family. Since he was including Asato in his group, B seemed to think, it was all right to have some fun at his expense in return for the favor. And though this was difficult logic for a boy of seven to argue against, it shamed Asato nonetheless to hear the boy he had trusted so much speculating about Asato's father's unwillingness to marry his mother, and even more to hear B speak of Ruka's beauty in the same vulgar manner he used to talk about other girls in town. Indeed, the latter did more than shame Asato, it angered him as well, for it made him wonder how close B had come to his sister when Asato was not watching for him to make the conclusions he did; and he came to feel jealously protective of Ruka. When he asked her about it, she claimed not to have spoken to B; but based on what intimate details B told him, Asato grew more and more uncertain about whose story he should believe, and he hated that very much.

He hated it almost as much as knowing he could do nothing about it. If he did, he might lose B's companionship completely, maybe even incur his distaste, and Asato dreaded that outcome as well. He dreaded a return to that utter isolation that had made those first few weeks of school almost unbearable. So he played along, laughing at his own expense when B's companions laughed, though he was disgusted with himself for doing so; and meanwhile he loathed his weak self that could not stand up for his mother and older sister except in the privacy of his own thoughts.

But what seemed the worst to Asato was not enough for B. Gradually his teasing turned to goading, as he began asking Asato to perform tasks the points of which Asato could never ascertain. True they were mostly harmless things, the silly stunts and contests and such which children use to develop their own hierarchies, and it was not as though B did not ask his older friends to participate in them as well. As far as the adults were concerned, this was normal behavior for boys their age, part of an innate competitiveness that was best explored now and gotten over with, rather than be allowed to develop into an immature urge they carried around when they reached adulthood. Nor would they have seen it as anything out of the ordinary that these childhood trials bothered Asato. That too, to his constant dismay, was deemed normal.

It seemed, though, that for B they were something more, something not quite normal at all. It seemed to Asato that his older friend got a weird kind of pleasure from seeing his followers obey his most outlandish commands. He would laugh when they failed or refused, and with each new proposal there was a certain glimmer in his eyes that filled Asato with a dread that sat in his stomach like a lead weight. He was relieved when those commands were given to other boys, but he lived in constant fear of the lunch hour or afternoon when he would be called upon to perform for B's delight.

Yet, when he looked back on that time later in life, it was not wholly that particular fear that formed the core of that heavy sense of dread.

Again, most of the time B's tasks were harmless, and fairly painless. Touch the back wall of the general store and run out before the clerk sees you, for example, or steal some sen from your parents to buy the group candy. At worst they could be embarrassing. But other tasks sat poorly indeed with Asato. One contest the boys liked to play was this. They would dash out of class when the final bell rang and wait some ways up the road for the girls to pass by them on their way home. When the girls walked by, the boys would leap out into the road and chase the girls and pull their hair. Whoever could make the most stubborn of the girls cry was held in esteem by his fellows, a man among the boys.

To Asato, however, it was a game of cruelty that had no purpose other than for B to show off his control. Yet even despite this revelation, B's control was absolute, and even Asato was able to bear only so many calls of "coward" before he too was sucked into the action; though he avoided looking into those girls' eyes as though they were the very eyes of Medusa herself, whose glistening blackness would turn him to stone in front of those whose affirmation he so desperately needed.

In the height of summer, water bugs and cicadas became targets for pitching practice, and katydids and fireflies were caught for show and slow suffocation in glass jars around evening fires. Most people, Asato knew, even his own mother and sister, thought nothing of killing insects, even if they were stingy about _other_ Buddhist commandments. But didn't the priests teach them that that firefly or that mantis could easily be the reincarnated soul of a human being? Knowing this, when Asato studied their faces each time they were caught in his hands, he could not help imagining their tiny black eyes were staring back at him with just as much wonder, hiding tiny insect minds behind those eyes that were not unlike the wet, black eyes of the girls. At those moments he felt so strongly in his heart that those insects were trying their very best to live, too.

* * *

There was a young woman in town who all the boys admired, not least among them B and his group. She was perhaps no more than twenty or twenty-two years old, and possessed a wholesome beauty in her warm, oval face and demure frame that was praised by other women in the town. She lived alone with her mother in a lovely house at the end of a quiet street shaded by the trees. Yamada was their name, and the boys would whisper it among themselves when they saw the two women approaching. When they would pass, however, the normally unstoppable tongues of the boys went still and their eyes watched the young Ms Yamada go by them, hoping to catch a smile from her, however slight it might be, or even just her flickering gaze. To have that gaze alight on one was enough to make him the envy of his companions.

And none was so envied in this regard as B. To listen to him tell it, it would seem that among all of them he alone was on familiar terms with Ms Yamada and her mother. He was full of stories about how he had run errands for them, and been amply rewarded by Ms Yamada in particular with treats and warm words best whispered from ear to ear. For this B's companions at once hated him jealously and held him up as a standard of the masculine worldliness they wished to emulate.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to Asato when B suggested to them a new game that had the Yamadas at its center. He suggested they play a prank on the Yamadas by making them think robbers had entered their house. To Asato this sounded like the surest way to a beating, but B reassured them all that once Ms Yamada discovered that he was responsible she would shrug the whole thing off as the joke it was meant to be and they would suffer no repurcusion. The other boys could not help but take B at his word; after all, no one among them was better known by the Yamadas than B, and if he said there would be no harm done then who were they to question?

Despite this, only a handful of boys could find no excuse to get them out of implementing B's plan. Asato was one of them. Each time he tried to back out or express his uncertainty, B called him worthless, a scared little girl, or worse. The threat of being relegated to outsider status once again was the most effective tool, just as it had always been; and Asato went along, convincing himself all the while how it would all turn out with the Yamadas unhurt. Lately it had become all too easy to do that.

B knew just when the Yamadas went out to the market. So one day, while they were gone, the boys climbed over the fence and sneaked into the house shaded by trees at the end of the street. It was not a large house, but it was larger than any Asato had ever lived in, with wide, bright rooms and a veranda looking over a well-kept, enclosed garden just outside the dining room. Some knick-knacks and books were arranged neatly on shelves and on the top of the _tansu_ chest in one room, in the corner of which was a gramophone on a table, and a bowl of apples picked from the garden was sitting in the center of the dining table. A bit of embroidery sitting on the edge of the same table, waiting for the women's return, was the only thing that did not seem to have its own place; and seeing it there suddenly made Asato think of his own mother, doing needlework over their old, worn table in the small, dark dining room of their own home, which had no apple trees outside of it.

Which had no knick-knacks, aside from a few sundry items kept hidden in drawers or else displayed in the family shrine in lieu of a _tokonoma_ alcove. Which had no music brightening its darkness, nor even any instruments on which to play music. Which could not come close to the rich simplicity of this house with its plainness, its lowliness.

The beauty of the Yamadas' house suddenly aroused such jealous admiration in Asato that he was ashamed of his own household. Perhaps it was for that reason that when he saw the other boys rifling through drawers, pulling out linens and kimono and spilling them on the floor, he could no longer find the capacity within himself to stop them—nor even the desire to stop them. A part of him wanted to tear apart the utter perfection of the house as well, and bring it down to the level of his own home—the floors of which remained stained and chipped no matter how spotless the tatami placed over them, and whose doors continued to stick in their jambs despite the glowing white paper on them. In that moment, a part of Asato wanted nothing more than to make this house and that one equal.

Yet in the fore of his mind remained the promise he had made to himself that the Yamadas would not be hurt by what he and the others did here today. It was never his intention to ruin the Yamadas' possessions, merely startle the two women a bit as per B's plans. So he took some of the books from their shelves and laid them on the floor in a meticulously strewn manner, some resting on their open pages with their spines bent carefully back. He found a cache of letters in the _tansu_ and scattered these on top of the books. Then he went into the kitchen, where he found B looking through the canisters that sat in rows on the shelf and sniffing their contents, occasionally taking a taste for himself. Asato pulled out pots and pans and lay empty bottles on their sides, and the violent sound of all of this rattling together no matter how careful his movements fascinated him strangely, making him want more of this careful play of pseudo-destruction. He opened the pantry and set sweet potatoes and canned beef rolling out after one another in a little parade.

Only when B took something from a tin canister with some foreign language written on it and pushed it into his hands did Asato stop with a sudden doubt about what he had done. It was money. Asato nearly dropped it. Instead, he pushed it back, admonishing B: he had said they were only to _play_ at robbers, not be robbers themselves. B laughed. He had said that, he replied simply, and put the money back.

"Take some of this instead, then," he told Asato, and dumped a handful of rice into his cupped palms. The white grains spilled through Asato's fingers and bounced off the wooden floor like pearls from a broken necklace, and he asked what he should do with it. "Whatever you like!" B laughed, and he led Asato back out into the dining room, leaving a trail of rice behind them.

Asato scattered it on the dining table, then he tipped over the bowl of apples for good measure. B caught one that came rolling out and took a large bite out of it. The flesh was juicy and crisp, and the sound of him biting into it was like the sound of life itself. He tossed the apple to Asato, who had a taste as well, though his bites were small and possessing of an actual, physical hunger.

It was just a simple apple, picked from someone's garden, but to him then its sweetness was like the sweetness of dessert after a meal of carrots and leeks—like a cigarette is to a soldier, a small but just payment for a job he hadn't really enjoyed doing but had done well. Asato closed his eyes and concentrated on the fruit. It was only the sickly crack of china hitting the tatami that brought him abruptly back to the present.

He looked up to see B standing over the broken remains of one of the figurines that had graced the _tansu_. It was a Western piece, a porcelain young woman in eighteenth century dress. The head with its towering gray wig and the delicate torso had broken off from the full skirt, the underside of which now pointed up at them in a violated manner.

The apple fell from Asato's grasp. "What are you doing!" he shouted at B. "You never said anything about breaking anything!"

Why not? was B's retort, as though he really could find no reason to stop. He raised the broken figurine's companion, a young man with his arm outstretched as though in desperation to help the young woman. It was just a porcelain figurine, but Asato felt compelled to help it. It represented so much more in his eyes than the materials that had made it or the name that was stamped into its feet. He grabbed B's arm and wrestled the figurine away.

But the snarl on B's face almost made him wish he hadn't. The other boys had come at Asato's outburst, and B derided him in front of them, calling him a sissy afraid of breaking a few dolls: that's what happened when your father ran off after you were born. It was time to go anyway, he said; the Yamadas would be back at any moment; and with his companions in tow B made his way to the back door through which they had come, but not before he had ripped a few tears in the paper for good measure. Asato's feet felt like they were made of lead as they pulled him along after them.

The sight of the family shrine made him pause as he passed. Perhaps it was because unlike the rest of the house, this single feature was arranged in a manner almost identical to the shrine in his own home. In it was a photograph of a young couple on their wedding day, one of whom he recognized as Ms Yamada. The man beside her also appeared alone in a larger portrait beside it, and in this one he was dressed as a soldier. In fact, the young woman everyone had thought of as _Ms_ Yamada was in fact Mrs, the young widow of Mr Yamada who had died in the Russo-Japanese War. Though she had no children, the woman who lived here with her late husband's mother was nonetheless just like Asato's mother.

* * *

Within every child there exists the sincere belief that if one only wishes ardently enough even the worst of events will somehow undo itself.

That was what Asato wished now. He prayed so very hard that what had happened in the Yamadas' house had been nothing more than a dream; or, if it were not that, that somehow the damage he and the rest had done might magically reverse itself, and the Yamadas never know the difference.

Of course, such was not the way the world works.

By evening, word had spread of the Yamadas' plight. Neighbors warned each other to keep a close watch on their belongings. The local police became involved, swearing to bring the vandals to justice. Asato's mother came home with word of Mrs Yamada and her mother-in-law's distress. To return and find their home and belongings in such a ransacked state had been bad enough, but with Mr Yamada deceased the two women felt alone and defenseless in the house, and feared that such a thing might happen again, with worse results.

Seeing the way his mother and sister empathized with the Yamadas, their knitted brows expressing such worry for the two women they hardly knew, Asato could bear the torment of keeping secret what he had done no longer. When his sister asked over the dinner table why he had hardly touched his food, it all came out.

He confessed to them everything. He was so sorry, he said the whole way through—so sorry that he had caused Mrs Yamada and her mother-in-law such pain and worry; but even more sorry, though he did not come right out and say it so clearly, that he had let down his mother and sister like this. As he told the story, their expressions gradually changed from sympathy to shock to a look of such utter disappointment that Asato had never before witnessed in them. And he was its target. He kept expecting that at any moment their stern looks would dissolve into sympathy for him, that they would see how much _he_ was suffering, and that all would be forgiven; but this did not happen. Instead, Ruka hid her large, sorrowful eyes from him as she wiped a silent tear away with her sleeve; and his mother immediately rose from the table, leaving dinner unfinished, and dragged Asato with her to the Yamadas' before he could even protest.

There, before Mrs Yamada and her mother-in-law and the police detectives in the dining room he had helped wreck, Asato repeated everything he had just confessed to his mother and more. Never had he been more ashamed than he was when he said those words in that room and heard his mother apologizing for her son's behavior beside him, bowing as low and humbly as he was as though the failure were hers. It was in that room, with the rough weave of the tatami scratching his forehead, itself littered with the maggot-like white grains of rice he had scattered, that he fully understood that the pain he had caused did not belong exclusively to him; he had caused hardship for his mother, and for the detectives who had come to investigate, but most of all he had hurt the Yamadas gravely. He had never even bothered to think until now, as he saw the damage he and the others had caused through new eyes—eyes whose scales had fallen off only through such grave trespasses—that those letters that still lay scattered irreverently on the parlor floor might have been from Mrs Yamada's husband, written on a distant battlefield on the mainland. That thought was more than he could bear. As he bowed and sobbed and watched his own tears fall on the backs of his hands, his heart's only wish was that they might all forgive him, though he feared that what he had done was beyond forgiveness. He may have been a fool, but that did not mean he had acted with pure intentions either—not in the least; and even if he had, that did not change the fact that, for the Yamadas, the act of vandalism itself was an act of malice in which he had been a participant.

At one point he glanced up at Mrs Yamada. Her young, beautiful face was turned slightly down, her dark glistening eyes focused stubbornly on the tatami between them; and on her lips was the slightest smile that never parted to utter a sound, as though to say even a single word would bring a wave of uncontrollable grief she could not risk. It was her mother-in-law who answered for her, speaking to Asato's mother with a kindness that Asato knew was meant for her and not himself as she agreed to have Asato pay off his crime by helping to fix the damage.

But as for B, she told them, neither she nor her daughter knew who the boy was; nor did they care to know who it was who had caused them such anguish. At this revelation Asato started; and through his shame rose a single, tall flame of anger that flickered within him like the tongue of a snake. B had lied to him. He had lied in order to make Asato hurt two innocent women. Just as he had lied to undermine Asato's faith in his own sister. He had told Asato nothing but lies from the very beginning.

Their entire friendship had been a lie from the very beginning.

That truth became immediately apparent at school, as B and his companions blamed Asato for the beatings and humiliation they had received at home with their glares that were like daggers flying through the air, aiming straight at his heart. Their stares roused a certain amount of fear and regret in Asato instinctively, yet on the other hand he also felt as though a great weight had been taken from his shoulders. Like a person newly enlightened to the truth of existence, now that he saw how shallow their vows of friendship had been, and how shallow their abilities to feel remorse for what they had done ran, Asato was more embarrassed to think he had ever considered them friends of his than he was to lose their companionship.

While they groused after class, he made the daily trip to the Yamadas to pay off the debt he owed them, cleaning and fixing what material things he could in place of the inner wounds that he knew were forever beyond his power to mend. Just as he could never fix the figurine of the young woman that B had broken, he thought—though even that returned to its place on the _tansu_ beside the young man after a week, painstakingly glued back together, though it would forever bear the signs of his trespasses in the cracks that encircled its bodice and delicate arms. The human psyche was a lot like that, he came to think. Though it may be broken and chipped by others along the way, it has the will to live and repair itself even after the worst tragedies, its resilience so unlike the temporal body which it inhabits. Even after Mrs Yamada's husband died, she and her mother-in-law continued to find happiness around them—in their music and their garden and the old letters of the man they loved, and in the unwavering support of one another's companionship.

The same could not be said for B and his wounded pride. The humiliation Asato had caused him with his confession was a betrayal that could not be forgiven. In the Confucian code of conduct that school children everywhere cling to perhaps strongest of all, it was the worst sin that Asato could commit, and B would not let him forget it. Nor would he let such an offense slide so easily. He ostracized Asato with a look, and turned his other followers against him with meaningful whispers between class periods—but that was only for starters.

The tension was bound to come to a head, and one day not long after Asato's confession it did. B and his companions were waiting for Asato on his way home from school when they stepped in front of him on the road, blocking his way, just as they did to catch the girls whose hair they pulled.

Asato slowed to a stop. And for the first time since he could remember, he found himself instilled with a genuine fear of physical pain.

"There he is," B boasted to his friends as he stood between them with his hands in his pockets. "There's the tattle-tale traitor."

The dirty, stinking rat-traitor, his friends laughed and nudged one another. It was obvious they had been waiting since Asato's first day of school for this. Nobody broke his promises and turned on his friend like that, they said, especially when that friend was someone as magnanimous as B. Someone who did that to his own buddies . . . well, he was no one anyone wanted as a friend of theirs.

"So what d'you think we oughtta do about it?" B asked his friends, and despite their supposed suffering there were grins on all their faces. "We can't let him get away with something like this. Traitors're the worst of the worst. We can't let them go unpunished, now, can we?"

Hell no! came the chorus of shouts. What would become of the world order if something like that were allowed?

B's lips curled up in a snarl. "Besides," he said as he glowered down at Asato, "he ruined everything, that little bastard. It's all thanks to him y'all got beat and made to shovel out shit. Thanks to him Ms Yamada ain't speaking to me no more. He turned her against us—"

"That's not true!" Asato said. "She didn't even know who you were."

B bristled at that. "Shut the hell up!" he said, and raised one fist before Asato's face. "What would you know about it? You're just a good for nothing, fatherless son of a tramp—"

"You shut up about my mother!" Asato yelled, and B grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled hard.

The other boys cheered raucously at that, and Asato winced, feeling tears come to his eyes that he tried to blink back. It was not just the stinging in his scalp that hurt him so. Through the roar of the others' laughter he caught their insults, their mocking whines as they imitated his whimpers, and he knew that in their eyes he had been downgraded to the worth of those girls whose hair they pulled for fun, if not lower yet. He hadn't realized it before, but they had probably hated those girls as much as they hated him right now.

It wasn't fair. This wasn't the way the world was supposed to work. Telling the truth and living a clean life were supposed to be rewarded, not stomped on and punished by overwhelming strength and cruelty. As Asato fell to one knee in the dusty road he felt that world view to which he had clung so desperately slowly shattering all around him, dissipating in the dry air like the dirt they all kicked up so that he could not pull its pieces back together.

And through their taunts B's cold voice came to him clear as a bell as he said, "Oh? What're you gonna do about it?" He was on top of Asato, holding the younger boy down as he struggled to get away without pulling out his own hair in the process. Asato felt B's elbows digging into his back as he pouted, "You gonna go tell your mommy? You gonna go tell your big sister?"

Asato gritted his teeth. He hated the way B talked about his mother and Ruka. He hated it more than anything, and always had hated it. That tongue of flame that had flared up and flickered inside him in the Yamadas' home returned, but now he felt it like a material thing, growing and expanding within his body so fast and fiery hot it threatened to burst right through his skin. He screamed. That relieved the pressure, but the thing remained insatiable. B's stomach was right over his head, pushing it down to face the dirt, when Asato bucked forward and butted his head right into it, knocking B over.

He felt more than heard the air leave B's lungs. Then he lost his balance, there was a solid _thuck_ like the figurine had made falling on the tatami only reverberating throughout his body, and the next thing he knew he was sprawled across B on the ground. It was only a moment before Asato was pushing himself to his knees; and seeing B on his back in the dirt trying to catch his breath under Asato's weight brought that fiery thing right to the surface again.

"I wish you would just die and leave me alone!" he shouted, as he began hitting B's arms that the older boy had brought up to defend himself. "We'd all be better off if you were dead!"

Little did he know that those words, spoken by children everywhere to no ill effect, would change his life completely.

There was a stunned pause among the other boys, almost as though they felt something ominous pass among them in the air with Asato's outburst. But that feeling passed quickly, and as boys are wont to do, they began to tease him anew for thinking such a thing would scare them—covering for the fact that, for a brief moment, it had. They pulled Asato off of B, grabbing fistfuls of his clothes and pulling every which way until the stitches of his sleeves began to rip. Asato looked to B for help, even though it had been B he wished dead; but this time B would not oblige him. He merely sneered as he got to his feet, wiping the saliva from his cheek with the back of his hand, and the look that was in his once kind eyes seemed to Asato to pledge nothing less than murder.

It was the last thing he would ever see on B's face again as he shrugged out of the other boys' grasps and took off in a sprint. All the way home, Asato could hardly believe there had ever been a time he would have done anything to gain that boy's love and acceptance.

* * *

At first Asato thought it was probably just a coincidence that B did not show up for class the next day. But when he soon learned that B had passed away during the night, Asato could not get the thought that he must have caused it out of his head.

There was no way Asato or any of the others could have known what killed B so suddenly and silently. But to all the boys who had witnessed the fight the afternoon before, there was no doubt something more mysterious and far more sinister than any natural ailment was responsible, and for this they could think of no one better to blame than Asato.

Fresh in their minds were his last words to B the day before: how Asato had said he wished B were dead. And, lo and behold, not even a day later that was how he wound up. Such perfect timing could not be ignored. Asato must have done some voodoo to kill B in his sleep, they were convinced, or perhaps it was on the very road itself that he had cursed B and cut short his young life. They did not bother to hide their suspicions and their contempt from Asato as they whispered such things among themselves in class and stared at him across the aisles. Not only was he a traitor, they said, but he was a murderer as well. Poor B . . . to think he had trusted Asato enough to bring him into their fold, never even suspecting that that boy could be a villain in disguise.

No, not a villain. A monster. There was no other word to describe something like Asato. No ordinary human being was capable of what black magic he must have used to kill B. Only a monster could do such a thing—a demon, just like they had said from the beginning, that should never have been brought into existence.

Their words cut to Asato's heart. As he scrunched up his body behind his desk and tried in vain to concentrate on his teacher's words instead of theirs, he had to wonder: was there some truth to what they said? He couldn't remember doing anything in particular to hurt B, other than trying to hit him the afternoon before, but he couldn't have hurt him that bad, could he? Yes, he was glad that B was gone from his life for good, but did that make him a monster?

Maybe it did, he thought. After all, B had said so many cruel things to him, but he had never once said he wished Asato would die and leave _him_ alone.

They would be waiting for him on his way home again for sure, Asato knew. Surely the boys who had honestly considered B a friend would never forgive him for what he had done, even though he himself wasn't sure how he could have done it. He took a longer way home that skirted around the town and took him out by the rice fields; but somehow the boys found him. At the sight of them Asato broke into a run. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, to the point they felt like they would fall off, but the older boys with their longer strides were soon catching up, their voices always sounding like they were right behind. And when they did catch him . . .

Help me, Asato prayed in his heart to no one in particular. Don't let them get a hold of me. Because when they do . . . _when they do . . ._

Something went flying past his ear to land ahead of his stride in the soft soil with a dull plop. He thought nothing of it, until another such something hit him in the shoulder. It stung. Rocks, he realized. The boys were throwing rocks at him. He tried to run faster, but they were so close now he could hear their shouts to one another to catch the monster, the demon—don't let him get away—make him pay for what he did to B—make him wish he had never been born. They were going to kill him. Asato was sure of it. If they didn't catch him and rip him apart, they would stone him to death first. Their rocks kept flying through the air around him like a meteor shower, smacking into his back and legs and head. Asato didn't think anything could hurt as much as that.

His foot fell into a divot in the soil and he pitched forward face-first onto the ground. The moment he felt himself falling he knew it was all over. As he lay still trying to catch his breath, he knew he couldn't run any more, his legs hurt so bad from the strain and from being bruised by the thrown rocks. The rich smell of dirt was strong in his nostrils and he dug his fingers into it, wishing that the earth and the tall grasses of this field might just absorb him at that very moment and take him away from his pain, and from the boys who he knew must be right behind him. "Help me," he muttered into the ground, giving voice to the words that had been repeating themselves in his head with each footfall. "Someone, please, help me. Get me out of here." Anywhere else but here. . . .

Though he was expecting it at any moment, the first blow still took him by surprise. And it proved to him that something could indeed feel worse than being pelted by rocks. So much worse. While Asato was closing his eyes and pressing himself to the ground, the first boy to arrive kicked him in the side. The shock knocked the breath out of Asato and he curled up on his side, holding his gut. Opening his eyes, he watched the feet of the older boys surround him. He hardly had the time or strength or desire to look up into their faces, let alone past waist level, for he already knew what he would find on those faces: cruel grins of triumph, snarls of disgust, vengeful sneers. . . . Those images remained imprinted in sharp relief into his mind from before. Those who still had rocks in their hands threw them down at him point-blank, some hitting the side of Asato's face where he felt warm blood start to trickle down his skin. When they ran out of rocks they used their fists and their feet, punching and kicking him wherever they could, pulling his hair and spitting on his face and his Western clothes.

There was no way Asato could have fought them all off even if he had had the strength to fight back, and no doubt that was their intent in attacking as a pack. If he had killed a boy like B so easily, they were not about to take any chances. Behind their blows was a fear that was barely tangible. Their voices all ran together with the sounds of shoes scuffing the dirt and connecting with his body, but every now and then Asato could make out the same key words: Monster. Demon. We'll make him pay. We'll make him wish he was never born. Asato couldn't be sure which truly hurt more, the physical blows or those words.

He wasn't sure when he had started sobbing, nor when he had started apologizing for killing B. Only that they went on beating him for what seemed like forever; and when they grew tired of that and their blows became weaker, and Asato thought they might finally be finished with him, they urinated on him for good measure. He shielded his face with his arms, but that was little protection. The warm urine soaked his clothes and his hair and steamed in the autumn air; its acrid, ammoniac smell choked him. The older boys laughed at his sobs and his vain attempts to protect himself. That would teach him, they said. It was only what someone like him deserved, they said—and part of Asato couldn't help but believe it.

When they finally left him alone, Asato allowed himself to cry in earnest. Alone in the field and sheltered from view by the tall grass, there was no one to hear him, nor to see him in that shameful state. Each hitched breath ached, which only prompted another. Even his unique body was helpless against all that the boys had done; and truth be told, they probably would have beaten him within an inch of his life if it were not for that unique gift. But even that was just another reminder of how different he was from the other boys—how inhuman he was. That all that they had done was not nearly enough to kill him and end his misery for good.

The sky had begun to darken by the time he managed to drag himself home. His sister was waiting for him when he did return; and though his clothes were damp and he smelled horribly of urine and dirt and dried blood, Ruka put her arms around him and gingerly helped him inside. She bid him to lie down as she went and fetched a basin of water, and helped him undress in the bathroom when his sore muscles made him seize up.

As she did her best to scrub the dirt and filth from his body, Asato was suddenly so moved by her kindness and how sharp its contrast to all that had befallen him that day that he could not hold back his tears. They fell silently onto his knees, but Ruka who was at his back noticed them nonetheless and embraced him from behind, leaning him back against her breast even though the soapy water on his back would soak her kimono. She held him tightly like that, whispering into his ear that everything would be all right as the palm of her small hand gently tapped his chest over his heart, as though to make sure it kept its tempo. In contrast to the bitter stench of his clothes that lay in a rumpled pile in the corner, the fresh scent on her skin and clothes were to him the purest, most beautiful scent he had ever known, like the first faint whiff of plum blossoms on a clear winter day. To Asato it seemed as though not even the bodhisattva themselves could smell more wonderful than his sister.

But such kindness was surely more than he deserved.

"Ruka," he started carefully as she held him, "is it true I'm a demon?"

Her hand went still for just a moment. "Whatever would make you say such a thing?"

"The boys at school say I'm a monster," he sobbed. "They say only a monster could have made B die the way he did. And I don't know how I did it, but I must have killed him, so that means . . . that means I . . ."

He trailed off and could say no more as Ruka shushed him tenderly, like a mother does her child. Her selflessness pierced his heart, and he felt such love for her in that moment he thought he might die. Even if it was a different kind of pain from those of his injuries, it hurt just as much. "You're not like that at all, Asato," she said, and it sounded to his own ears that she must have been holding back tears as well as she did so. "You're not a monster."

Her weight at his back was his only comfort, his only anchor keeping him steady. "I'm not?"

"No, you're not. You're as human as I am. Without a doubt. I guarantee it."

* * *

That was not the last time Asato received a beating from the older boys, nor was it the last time they threatened to extinguish him completely. But at the same time it was apparent that though they could hurt him and humiliate him as a pack just fine, they were afraid to be caught with him as individuals, as though they still feared that he might magically do to them what they were sure he did to B: he had only to single them out first. No one had forgotten his final outburst against B.

When they were not actively taking out their fear and disgust on Asato, the older boys simply scorned him and gave him a wide berth on school grounds. Gradually it caught on among the other students as well, who would pass him with wary gazes and chide others aloud who did not seem to realize Asato's toxicity and interacted with him carelessly. At first glance, such behavior would make an outsider suspect it was done in youthful exaggeration, which makes mountains out of the smallest anthills, and all the more so when its target is one so meek and harmless to look at him. Asato and the other students knew better, however: theirs was a genuine disgust, for in their eyes Asato did indeed represent something dangerous and inhuman.

As a result it seemed that Asato was damned to remain an outcast. Either he was isolated by the efforts of B's friends who had never liked him to begin with and now had new fuel for their hatred; or else by his own sins perpetrated when he ran with B's company, unforgiven by the girls whose hair he had pulled and the classmates he had allowed to be harassed by that older boy with silent indifference.

So when he witnessed B's old posse berating a couple of brothers in the schoolyard, he saw it as an opportunity to redeem himself. The older boys demanded the brothers' lunches, and then when they had received them threw the food down on the ground and called it tainted and an insult to them, just as the mere sight of the two brothers in their school was an affront to them. They called the brothers _eta_ and nonhumans whose dirty brown rice wouldn't even be fit for their dogs.

Asato might have been young but he was not ignorant about such things. When he had first come home asking about this word "eta" that he had heard in town, his mother had patiently explained to him how there was a class of people that were considered untouchables in the old social system, whose professions made them unclean—"But that was in the old days. In this era you can hardly tell the difference between someone from an untouchable family and someone from a normal family anymore, so what does it really matter?" Asato couldn't tell the difference either. The older boys called the brothers dirty and treated them like they were subhuman, but to Asato they looked no different than himself or any of the other students. There was no reason as far as he could see for such abuse.

Asato sympathized with the brothers, who were being harassed for no other reason than simply existing. Their plight reminded him of his own; he would be a coward and a hypocrite if he did not stand up for them when he had wished on so many occasions lately that someone would intervene on his behalf. But he could not deny that he had other motivations as well.

He charged the group of older boys and ran right into them, shoving them away from the two young brothers. The boys Asato had touched jumped back so suddenly it was as though they had been shocked, and their companions recoiled in horror lest Asato do the same thing to them. "Leave them alone!" Asato screamed at the older boys. "What'd they ever do to you? They can't help what they are!"

The older boys laughed at that, but their grins were brittle. "Look who thinks he's a tough guy now," said one, putting his hands on his hips and towering over Asato, while another said, "Just what're you gonna do about it? You think those animals—" He nodded in the bothers' direction. "—are worth getting the snot beat outta you over?"

Asato bristled at that. The boy might as well have called him an animal, it wounded him like a fist right in the gut. He could feel the angry thing growing inside his body again, and he said the first thing to come to mind: "I'll put a curse on every last one of you! I mean it!"

Yeah, sure he would. The boys snorted and laughed even harder at that. A couple pretended to be so frightened they were trembling, whining "Don't hurt me" in obnoxious voices. They jabbed him in the shoulder, saying, "Go on, then. You think you're so awful, go on and do it."

They made Asato so sick, he clenched his fists and growled at the boys. He couldn't be sure if it was he who had done it or the thing inside, that seemed to be crouching deep down like a beast ready to pounce; but the older boys must have caught a glimpse of the thing beneath his surface as well, because all of a sudden their mirth died completely, and looks of genuine horror replaced the grins and sneers on all their faces. They turned and ran. He could hear a few of the bolder ones nervously laughing the whole thing off, but even that could not hide the fact that he had frightened them. Not one of them had not feared for that second that Asato might at the slightest encouragement have sent him to join B.

The brothers had been at his back and could not have seen whatever had caused the others' alarm; but nevertheless when he turned to them with a kind smile, the older brother, who at this time was about Asato's age, grabbed the arm of the younger and automatically took a step back. When Asato asked if they were all right, they started and could only manage to nod vaguely.

Asato looked down at the handkerchiefs lying soiled on the ground and the rice balls that had tumbled out of them into the dirt. "I'm sorry they ruined your lunch," he said to the two boys, "but I'll share mine with you if you'd like. It isn't much but—"

The older brother shook his head violently and took another step back. "We're fine!"

At the harsh sound of his voice, his younger brother looked as though he were about to cry.

"All right," Asato said slowly. He bent down and picked up the handkerchiefs and shook off the clumps of dirt. The two boys must still be shaken up by the others' bullying, he thought; but now that he had saved them from it, surely they would be grateful to him, right? It was not as though the two eta boys had any other friends in the school. As far as Asato was concerned, they were in the same boat. Didn't that obligate them to stick together? "Hey," he said as he held out the handkerchiefs to return them to the boys, "maybe you and I can be friends. I don't think you're different from anyone else at all."

He thought it might make the boys feel better to hear that, but apparently they did not share his opinion. The younger brother automatically reached out to take back his handkerchief, but his older brother grabbed his wrist before he could do so and pulled him away.

"Wait a minute—" Asato started after them, but the older brother rounded on him with tears in his eyes.

"Keep away from us!" he yelled at Asato. "I'd rather be a nonhuman animal than a demon like you!"

And he ran with his brother in tow for the shelter of the school building, leaving Asato alone in the center of the yard with those words. They continued to buzz inside his mind, pricking him again and again like a swarm of angry bees.

No, I'm not a demon! Asato wanted to scream back at him. Ruka promised I'm not! But even that small bit of reassurance had only a temporary effect, before the voice of doubt in his mind resurfaced.

* * *

Asato took the handkerchiefs home and washed them until they were like new. He took them back to school to return to the eta boys whose mother would probably be upset to have such things go to waste, the thought of asking for any compassion in return not even crossing his mind. But the brothers continued to refuse them day after day, until one morning Asato left the handkerchiefs on the older brother's desk. When he walked by later and saw them missing, he was pleased that finally he had been allowed to do something kind for them; but on his way out the door he recognized the pattern of one of the handkerchiefs hanging over the side of the wastebasket. Apparently even the eta brothers thought them polluted beyond redemption by his demon hands.

Thus Asato was alone again, and the despair he had believed so utterly unbearable when he first came to the school seemed like a fond dream in comparison. He would have given nearly anything to become that target of quiet ridicule and curiosity once again, rather than live with the constant oppressive weight of knowing, in everyone else's eyes, his entire existence was an abomination.

Only the adults in town and animals remained warm to him as they always had, drawn to his compassionate spirit, the latter probably empathizing with him as well: they knew what it was like to be downtrodden, at the mercy of the cruel. But what petty consolation that was, when compassion was worth less than a grain of rice in the schoolyard.

The older boys lost interest in beating Asato after a while. The resentment and fear they had naturally felt after B's death had long since dissipated into a general and steady disgust for him. He was an easy target, and one they felt they had a duty to keep in line every once in a while with physical reminders that no matter what dark powers he possessed, they were still stronger and would not run away in fear of a boy a year or more their junior. If they wanted his lunch or his money, they got it; and if they wanted the thrill of pushing him around a little, they went ahead and pushed him around. It was useless to stand up for oneself against such a regime.

Asato's mother knew that well. When he came home with soiled shirts and trousers ripped at the knee from falls along the road, she cleaned and mended them without a word, only sorrowfully watching the needle thread up and down through the fabric. There was nothing she could do, and that made Asato angry, even though he knew it was true. Mothers were supposed to protect their children, weren't they?

Perhaps it was hypocritical of him, but he did not blame Ruka the same way. He did not want her becoming involved in the boys' affairs, becoming another precious thing Asato doubted his ability to protect, and was more ashamed than anything that he could not protect himself and be as strong for her as he wanted to be. When he came home bruised and dirty and tired, she would put her arms around him and draw him a bath or fix him a steaming bowl of soup. Perhaps her efforts to comfort him would have been deemed too bold by their society in that day, even for a sibling; but more than anything—even more than it embarrassed him to know that—Asato craved the warm embrace of his sister's arms that held him to her body, and her gentle caresses against his hair. She alone was his salvation, reassuring him that all would be right in the end. If he would just endure.

Endure. That was the key word, that could arouse such hope and such frustration simultaneously. The good, like the love he and Ruka had for one another, would triumph when all was said and done, she said; while cruelty would only beget cruelty upon the wicked. This truth, whispered in his ear with Ruka's soft breath as they lay next to each other at night, warmed Asato's body more thoroughly than any bath or bowl of soup could.

Yet somehow, those were some of the times when he wished the hardest he could rid himself of all who abused him.

* * *

One afternoon, when summer had come again, as he was hanging his head and walking down the road toward home after being pushed to the ground by the older boys, Asato walked headlong into a person coming the other way for the first time that he could remember.

He caught a glimpse of a gray linen three-piece suit before he bowed his head and apologized.

"That's all right, young man," the man said with an airy chuckle that Asato could tell at once was sincere. "I should have been more careful and realized you really weren't watching where you were going."

Asato blushed; but when he looked up and saw the smile on the man's face his embarrassment vanished with the throbbing in his knees and palms and rump. The man standing before him was not particularly tall or short, nor skinny nor fat, but looked to be pushing sixty years old by the lines in his face and his short gray hair that was slicked back. His was a kindly face that took easily to his smile, and looked as though it had been lined by laughter rather than hardship. The glasses he wore gave him an air of intelligence along with his pressed suit and leather shoes, now covered with a fine layer of dust from the dry dirt road. "I know when I was your age," he began again, "there was always some daydream or another preoccupying my thoughts, and leading me far from the direction I was meaning to go."

"I wasn't daydreaming, sir," Asato said.

"Oh, you weren't?" The man looked over Asato's figure, noting the scrapes on his hands and bare knees. "No, I guess you weren't," he agreed more solemnly. But it was something in Asato's manner, as though he were agonizing over whether to say more, that made the man stop instead of moving on and say: "Maybe I should take a look at those scrapes for you. You wouldn't want them to become infected."

"Don't worry about it. It's nothing," Asato started.

But the man would hear nothing of it. "Maybe they feel like nothing, but what about the cuts no one can see, the ones inside? If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that those particular cuts won't go away without the proper treatment." Asato looked up at that, for it seemed as though the man could see right into his heart. He smiled again. "Come on. You can tell me what happened at my clinic just up the way there."

"Your clinic. Is that like a hospital?"

"Well . . ." The man laughed. "It's not really my clinic, per se. _That_ is in the city, where I live. But while I'm here visiting my family they let me use it as such."

"Then you're a doctor!"

The man slapped his forehead. "Where are my manners?" he said to himself. Then to Asato: "Yes, I am. They call me Dr H around here. And what should I call you, young man?"

"My name's Tsuzuki Asato," Asato said, and the man put out his hand.

"Well, Tsuzuki," he said as they shook, "it's a pleasure to meet you."

That was the first time anyone had ever called Asato Tsuzuki aside from his teacher; but that hardly counted, seeing as how every time the teacher called him that it felt like the name of that man who had been Ruka's father but had passed before Asato was born. But when Dr H called him Tsuzuki, it felt for the first time like his own name, and that was a wonderful feeling indeed.

The two walked up the road a little ways and presently came to a small Western cottage with a gate around one side and roses blooming in the yard. There were all types and colors of roses, from bushes to vines that crawled up the fence and trellises on the side of the house, delicate tea roses to huge grandifloras, from bright red and pink and orange to pale yellow and the clearest white. Each one had its place and was blooming magnificently. Asato thought he could smell them long before they reached the front gate.

Dr H showed him inside out of the sun, and Asato waited in the parlor while the doctor poured him a glass of cool water with lemon in the kitchen. While Asato drank, thinking he had never drunk anything so sweet, Dr H cleaned up the scrapes and bruises on his legs and hummed to himself every once in a while. The windows were open to let in the breeze, and from outside the droning of a dragonfly cruising by or a bumblebee visiting the roses interrupted the steady chirping of the cicadas that filled the summer air.

After a while, Dr H said, "I guess you were right. These bumps and scrapes will heal in no time."

As though to speed up the process, Asato rubbed the raw patch on the heel of one hand. "I've always been a quick healer."

"Yes, I can see that."

Dr H did not say anything more than that, but the weight of his silence seemed to be implying something more, prying the truth slowly out of the bottom of Asato's heart like a pump gradually sucking water up out of the ground.

"They say I'm a demon," he confessed suddenly. "A monster who needs to be punished. That's why they pushed me. . . . But they're not that bad, really, the other boys—at least, not anymore—"

"They're bad enough," said Dr H, stunned that he would say such a thing in their defense. "Calling you a demon—where would they even get an idea like that?"

"It's my eyes, sir. They're not like everybody else's. Their color is weird. Everyone says only demons have eyes that color."

"Let me see," said Dr H; and Asato leaned forward and opened his eyes to the ceiling so that he could get a good look. The doctor tilted his face toward the light, frowned, and tilted it back. "Ah . . ." he said to himself, and Asato thought he would die of impatience to know what the doctor was seeing. Finally, the verdict: "They look normal to me. Yep, perfectly human eyes, all right."

"But they're purple."

"So they are. But that isn't completely unheard of."

"It isn't?" Asato could hardly believe his ears.

But Dr H did not answer. Instead he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his expression was graver than any Asato had yet seen. It made his face, which seemed crafted for and by geniality, appear quite sad and tired. "Don't get me wrong, Tsuzuki," he began again; "I do think demons exist. In fact, I'd bet my life on it. But it's not the color of a person's eyes that determines their nature: it's the color of their heart."

When Tsuzuki put his hand to his chest, the doctor shook his head. "No, I don't mean the literal color." He sighed, but not in exasperation. "What I mean is, there is a darkness in the human heart that is like a demon. No one knows where it comes from, and not everyone has it. Even among those who do, most have it just a little bit and keep it concealed deep within themselves their whole lives.

"But others are not so careful. Those who desire to hurt others, who punish the weak just for being what they are, who can't stand happiness and feel like they have to destroy it—theirs is a demonic way of thinking, Tsuzuki. It is a way of thinking that is against society, because such a society as that would quickly cease to function. Does that make sense to you?"

Asato nodded slowly. What the doctor said sounded a lot like Ruka's command to endure, endure in goodness. Only the words used to explain it were different.

Yet his thoughts could not help returning to the anger he had felt before at her words, and how he would wish at those times that those who were cruel to him would be wiped off the face of the earth. That wish was a product of the dark thing he felt inside him. So by the doctor's definition, didn't that mean there was in fact a demon inside his self?

Dr H must have realized by the expression on Asato's face that his words had not exactly come as the reassurance he had thought they would be. "Well," he said with an apologetic smile, "maybe that's something you only come to understand when you get older. When you've seen as many different kinds of characters as I have in my profession, you can't help but notice the shades that exist in the human soul just that much more."

* * *

But Asato thought he understood perfectly.

It did take some getting used to, to think that in his nature was the kernel of something demonic. Yet, somehow, over time it was a thought that actually gave him hope, because, as Dr H had said, he was not powerless, not at the mercy of that dark spot within him, but a rational human being who had the ability to control it and suppress it, surround it with love and compassion as one surrounded the roots of a plant with soil and mulch. In time, maybe even that darkness could end up producing something wonderful, like the ugly, thorny stems of the rose bushes that nonetheless produced such beautiful flowers.

Those rose bushes in the yard of Dr H's house became symbols of inspiration to Asato, as well as fascination. After just that first accidental meeting, he found himself drawn to Dr H and all those things that surrounded him. Perhaps part of it was compensation: Asato had no male role models in his life and, barring the father of his imagination, never had—with the possible exception of B, but that had been nothing more than a painful delusion from the beginning—so perhaps it could be said that he naturally gravitated toward the doctor's nurturing personality which made him a grandfatherly figure in Asato's mind. Maybe it was not even a stretch to call him a fatherly figure. Asato craved his support and his wisdom about all manner of things, from the nature of the human heart to the nature of plants and insects, and the careful balance that existed between them; and Dr H encouraged him in his studies and spoiled him with Western sweets made by his daughter the likes of which Asato had never before imagined. A well-mannered young man like him was, after all, entitled to experience all the good things childhood had to offer, whether his eyes were brown or purple or something else entirely.

In his small house-cum-country clinic, Dr H had a gramophone not unlike the Yamadas', with a large horn that was scalloped to resemble the petals of a morning glory. Sometimes he would be playing one of his German records when Asato came over, and in the middle of their conversation over their tea and pie the doctor would inexplicably close his eyes and slightly bob his head to the strains of music that flowed out from the horn and filled the room, as though the melody were magically taking him back to some other place and time. The smile on his face took on a melancholy quality at those times that sparked in Asato a strange jealousy. No matter how much of his own heart he poured out to the doctor, there remained something of Dr H that he was never privy to.

It made him want to cling to that man as though he were his own father and beg him not to go and leave him alone again, though he could never be sure why that thought would spring to his mind or just where he thought Dr H was going. Only that, like the warmth of summer that each child knows is all too fleeting, he could not shake the feeling that this too was only temporary.

However, that fear he had convinced himself was so irrational one day turned out to be justified. When he arrived at the cottage one afternoon toward the end of summer, he found Dr H, and his gramophone, gone. The only trace of the elderly man that seemed to remain was his roses, blooming on oblivious to his absence.

Convincing himself that it was just in case, that there was some possibility however slight of the doctor's return, Asato waited on the front step until the sun hung low in the sky. It was about that time that he spotted a woman coming up the road. He thought she must have been taking a long way into town until she reached the gate. "Are you Tsuzuki?" she asked him.

He jumped up from the step at that. The woman was about his mother's age, and wore her kimono sleeves tied up and a handkerchief over her hair as though she had just been out in the fields. It took a moment before he recognized the similarities and understood that she was Dr H's daughter, the one who had baked those wonderful sweets the two of them had shared over the summer months.

"Father asked me to give this to you," she told him, and held a small envelope out to him, like the kind that held money and were given to children at the new year.

But it did not hold money. Inside was a simple white card that had written on it the doctor's name and the address of his clinic in the city: in case Asato was ever in Tokyo.


	2. Chapter 2

Insufferable years somehow passed in the small town after that. And then one day Asato's mother told him they were moving back to their old house in the city, the house where he and Ruka had been born. He remembered the city, in vague bits and pieces he could never be sure were actual memories and not dreams. He remembered paved streets and humming electrical wires criss-crossing the air above his head, and a general sense of order that distinctly lacked the smell of dirt that pervaded the country. His mother's reasons for moving were vague and practical, just as her reasons for moving out of the city had been, but Asato was relieved to get away from the painful memories this small town held for him, and start his school life anew in the big city.

The year was 1911; and it was not uncommon in the city to see young men and women in Western dress, or to see gentlemen walking down the street in _hakama_ and _haori_ and top hats. Technology was all around, even in the air; one could actually smell the signs of progress on an oppressive summer day. The buildings were close and dark, a comforting press of society all around Asato that would not allow him to wallow in loneliness. All the wonders of the world were at his fingertips in the local market, where even the sweets Dr H's daughter had made from scratch were easily available for purchase; where a person could catch a whiff of Italian meatballs as readily as fried noodles, and hear languages other than Japanese spoken by people passing by.

Even if daily life in Asato's neighborhood were not so exciting as that, everything about it nevertheless had the crisp clarity of newness. He was able to start classes with a clean slate—where nobody knew that he might have killed a boy, or thought to call him a demon because of his eyes. He was in the fifth grade now, and fifth graders saw themselves as more mature than that.

The only reason Asato's classmates had to tease him was when he missed the answer to an easy question, or said something preposterous when called upon. But the sound of their laughter was different from the laughter of the boys at his old school. These students' laughter did not come with derision: they found Asato amusing in a charming sort of way, and thought that he was trying to make them laugh, when in fact it was they who had discovered in him a sense of humor Asato had never known he had. It was a sense of humor that was all too easy to embrace, as it signaled to him acceptance among his peers, even if it was an acceptance that came with its own species of distance. When he made them laugh it was as though they were his friends in that brief interlude, and that was enough to content him. If it had a negative effect on his grades—well, that was the lot of the jester, an acceptable trade-off for the illusion of belonging.

But like a clown who hides his troubles behind a painted-on smile, if changes at school were easy to grow accustomed to, the same could not be said for changes at home. Ruka was about to turn eighteen; and with no prospects for college, whether financially or academically, there was not much of a future for a young woman such as herself other than to find a nice young man with a steady paycheck and settle down to start a family of her own. Each time that line of conversation came up among company, Ruka's expression would grow solemn and dark, and she would lower her eyes as though in mourning for her future self. It became such a conditioned response, Asato had merely to see that look to know when she was worrying about it, even when no one had said anything to prompt her response.

She confessed to Asato once the confused state of her emotions on the issue. On the one hand, she wasn't sure any young man would want to make her his wife. It was not as though she were particularly beautiful or useful, she said, and she had always been shy talking to boys. To Asato, however, this could not be farther from the truth, which he told her openly. Not only was she a skilled cook and seamstress, he said, but she was so stunning and charming any man would have to feel privileged to call her his wife. She would just chuckle at that and say little brothers were supposed to say such things; but Asato had witnessed the gazes of men turning her way himself—even if he did not always tell her this—and knew for a fact that no woman passed through his own judgment without first being held up next to Ruka.

But she could only laugh off so much of his flattery before she sobered and bit her lip. "But what if _I_ don't want a husband?" she would ask quietly, and say no more on the subject, just leave her inexplicable fear hanging in the air between them, an invisible barrier through which Asato could not reach to comfort her.

Not long after the three of them had moved into their old home, Ruka left Asato to live alone with their mother. In place of higher education, his mother told him, his older sister had decided to find work and board within the city, but this did not explain why Ruka had left with so little warning. She must be ashamed, Asato thought, if she could not tell me where she was going or why she had to leave so suddenly. I can't blame her; I would probably do the same thing if our situations had been reversed. He came to understand that his older sister saw her new path in life as a matter of family duty, as she tried to explain in her polite, round-about way in her weekly letters home that also contained a portion of her wages. Sending home this small amount of money from her hard work was her way of supporting their mother and Asato, so that when he finished public school he could attend college and make something of himself, and redeem their family from being in the government's debt. Knowing this at once made Asato fiercely proud of his sister, who continued to sacrifice so much for him, and severely guilty, for what a heavy burden of expectation had now been placed on his shoulders because of her decision. And with each month that passed with her agonizing absence, lesson work felt more and more like an unbearable chore.

Asato missed his sister very much. He told himself that if he only knew where she was—he wouldn't even have to go see her—his heart would be at ease; but all she would tell him in her letters was that she was working as a seamstress, and surely there were too many tailors in the city to narrow down. Ruka seemed reluctant to give him specifics, as though she were afraid he really would come visit her at her work, which Asato could not understand for the life of him. How could he ever be ashamed of his beloved sister? In his eyes, everything she did was perfection.

Even the way she was cruel enough to leave him without even the slightest thing from which he might take comfort was absolute and stunning. They said if one yearned for his true love hard enough, he would be able to fly to that person and meet them in his dreams; but even in slumber he remained lonely for her supporting presence, the image of her beautiful face. The only trace of her she allowed to comfort him where those material letters, on which Asato imagined he could smell the fresh scent of Ruka's skin. Perhaps even that was an illusion; but if that were the case, it was much better to have the illusion than to have nothing at all.

It was in this loneliness Ruka left him in, that even his schoolyard companions were useless to cure, that Asato's thoughts returned to the small town in which they three had at least been together; and he found himself craving the earthy smell that was so rarely caught in the city limits. Of all things that reminded him of that town, that was perhaps what he missed the most.

And he remembered the card Dr H had left for him, and the Tokyo address that was inscribed on it.

* * *

Dr H's clinic was farther away than Asato had imagined. Then again, Tokyo was a vast place, and it should have come as no surprise that there could be places within it that were half a day's walk or more away. Asato did not have the money for cab fare for that distance, let alone money for a bicycle. But a high school boy who lived down the street was kind enough to lend Asato his—once he had taught him how to ride. He would be getting a new one when he went off to college anyway, he said, after which time Asato was welcome to his old thing. His neighbor might have downplayed the whole transaction—Asato was still too small to ride it properly, he said apologetically—but Asato could think of few gestures more generous; he was indebted, after all, and he thoroughly embarrassed the high school boy with his display gratitude.

Only a couple of years had passed since Asato last saw Dr H, but to him that time had seemed like an eternity. He couldn't be sure the doctor would still recognize him given that he had grown since then, or that Asato would still be welcomed into his life.

In truth, though, he had little to worry about.

He found Dr H pruning the roses outside his office when he pulled up to the building on the borrowed bicycle. Dr H looked up and immediately recognized Asato, waving and shouting to him, "Well well, if it isn't Tsuzuki! What brings you here, young man?"

"Wouldn't you know it, I'm living in Tokyo now." Asato could not keep the grin from his lips if he tried with all his might. He told Dr H where his house was located, and the elderly man's eyes widened. "You rode all the way here?" he asked in admiring surprise.

Then as though he had just remembered something, he put down his shears and pulled off his gloves in a hurry, and beckoned to Asato to follow him, saying with a mysterious wink, "I want to show you something."

He led Asato around the side of the building, where he opened his arms wide and said, "Well? Isn't she gorgeous?"

Asato had seen automobiles in town before on occasion, but he had never seen one as close up as this, nor had he ever known anyone who actually owned one. Standing beside the curb was a brand-new and fresh-off-the-boat 1911 Haynes Model 20 touring car, with a 35-horsepower engine and collapsible canopy and room enough for five, magnificent in its glistening black paint and polished chrome that sparkled in the sunlight. Asato had never seen a more beautiful piece of machinery—it was like a work of art. The doctor was probably the first person in Japan to have one, and not for the first time Asato felt privileged to be considered the elderly man's friend. "It's amazing!" was all the could think of to say.

Dr H chuckled at that. Then he said, "Why don't you try it out."

Asato started. Was that really all right?

"Go on. Get in," Dr H said when he saw Asato's hesitation. "A modern boy should know his automobiles."

Though he was nearly bursting with eagerness to do so, Asato climbed carefully into the driver's seat. As he grabbed the steering wheel in both hands and looked around himself, taking in the view from behind the wheel, Dr H eased the door closed and folded his arms on top of it. "What do you think?" he asked Asato.

"I think it's incredible! How fast does it go?"

Dr H laughed. He tilted his head and answered, "Fast enough. I'll give you a ride in it sometime if you like."

"Would I!" Asato realized a little late that he had forgotten his manners; but with Dr H it hardly seemed to matter. His dark eyes were sparkling with as much wonder as Asato felt as he fondly caressed the hood as one might his most beloved horse. He was only too happy to share in Asato's every new discovery.

After some time with the automobile the two returned to the rose bushes, where Dr H finished his pruning while he asked Asato about his new life in the city. At one point he stood and straightened his back, and sighed to make Asato wonder if he had said something the elderly man found exasperating. Instead, Dr H extended the shears to Asato, saying, "This is getting to be ridiculous."

Asato didn't know what he meant.

"You keep watching my work and twitching your hands like you want to do this yourself. Well," Dr H pushed the shears toward him, "I think you're plenty old enough to understand how this works. Why don't you give it a shot?"

"I-I'm afraid I don't really know what to do," Asato started as he reluctantly took the shears. The doctor's roses had always appeared to him as such fragile living things, he hated to think what would happen if he hurt one.

But Dr H's smile was warm and patient. "I'll show you," he said, and gestured for Asato to join him by one of the roses.

It was a vivacious bush with dark green leaves and full blossoms as white as freshly fallen snow in the sunlight, their petals sparkling like velvet ribbon that had been folded and gathered into itself. Under Dr H's guidance he first snipped off the dead blooms and the flowers that had begun to wither and were turning brown. The brown foliage came off as well. All the while Dr H complimented Asato on his exactness, and the way he seemed to know instinctively where to cut without the doctor's saying so, as though he had been born to do just such a thing. Some people simply have a way with living things, he explained: not intrusive, responsive to the needs of individual creatures, they possess the natural ability to listen to things and understand what makes them grow and thrive, what those who do not have it call having a green thumb. He had had it when he was younger, and it led him to realize that his life's calling was to use that gift in the profession of a doctor of medicine.

"Then the plants are just easier patients?" Asato joked while he worked.

Dr H smiled, but he seemed to miss his humor. "No," he said, "they can be just as fickle and stubborn. Either way they always seem to think they know what's best for them better than you do."

"Well? Don't they?"

Dr H hummed as he thought about that. "Maybe you're right. But in any case, the roses certainly don't complain as much."

Asato chuckled to himself and turned his concentration back to the rose bush. After a few moments, Dr H said suddenly, "Have you ever given thought to becoming a doctor, Tsuzuki?"

Asato shrugged. "I guess. Adults always told my mother I should be one."

"Then I'm not the first person to see it," the doctor said as though to himself. Then pointedly to the boy: "They were not just flattering your mother, you know. I see it in the way you care for these plants, how in tune with living things you are. Not many boys your age can boast that."

But even if that were what Asato wanted, "I don't have the grades, sir."

Dr H was shocked. "What do you mean, don't have the grades? A bright young lad such as yourself? You're probably smarter than half the boys in your class put together. . . ." He trailed off and visibly grew calm, at which point he started again: "Well, even genius has been known to fail before it succeeds. More often than not it is its own worst enemy."

Asato said nothing, but quietly contemplated the doctor's words over the regular snip-snip of the pruning shears. Perhaps he should have taken them as words of advice and reassurance, a signal to believe in himself and step up the pace, or perhaps it was a signal to not take himself so seriously. But neither of those possibilities on this occasion entered Asato's mind. His thoughts had wandered back to Ruka, and how much she expected of him. I cannot afford to fail before I succeed, he thought to himself. For her sake: she's working so hard for mine.

The doctor did not seem to notice the shadow that hung over his train of thought. He stopped Asato suddenly, saying: "That's good. Now, when you've finished dead-heading them, you want to thin the blooms a little. Here, like this." And saying so, he took the shears back and, as Asato watched, began to snip off the young buds that had not yet opened.

Asato panicked despite himself. It was only a rose bush, but all of a sudden he felt it as the living thing it was—a living thing he had just been helping to thrive. "What are you doing?" he said, raising his voice uncharacteristically against Dr H. "You're hurting it!"

"I'm doing no such thing," the doctor said.

But Asato did not believe him, and could not believe his indifferent tone. "Those haven't opened yet."

"All the better. You see, Tsuzuki," Dr H explained as he snipped, "by thinning out the number of flowers that do bloom, you actually stimulate new growth. A plant only has so much energy it can spread around. So if it does not have so many flowers among which to divide that energy, it can concentrate its efforts on making just a few bloom so much more beautifully."

"But those buds you cut off . . . they looked healthy enough." If anything, some of them looked healthier than those that remained. "Weren't they trying their hardest to become flowers, too?"

The doctor sighed. "It isn't a matter of whether they're healthy or not—"

"Then how can you just decide which ones to cut off?"

How could anyone so carelessly decide which lives are worth ending—even if it is for the greater good of the whole? You don't do the same thing to people, Asato thought. But just as soon as that argument entered his brain, he was forced to stop and think about it. Was it not true that the world would be a better place if the few who spent their lives hurting others were to suddenly disappear? Just as wolves pick the old and sick from the herd to make it stronger? Human beings are not like other animals, however; they have rational minds and rational societies. Yes, the lives of many would improve if the few people like that boy Asato had somehow killed and his companions were snipped from the plant of society—but to whom would the power to make that decision even be given? In whose hands would the shears be placed, and could such a person even then conscionably make such a decision?

To make decisions such as that to the point one didn't even bother to think about what he was doing, nor ask himself why he was doing it in the first place, was that what it meant to be a doctor? Because if it was, Asato could no longer be sure that was a profession he wished to pursue, whether his grades were poor or perfect.

These were deep questions indeed for a boy of eleven to face within his heart; so Asato barely heard the doctor's reply. Perhaps it was true that there were some things such a kind-hearted soul such as his could not understand—or perhaps did not want to, lest in the search for answers he come face to face with that darkness Dr H said lies locked away within most souls, and inadvertently set it free.

The doctor must have noticed the boy's cheerful mood had begun to fade, for he stopped his pruning and fixed Asato's gaze with his. "Tsuzuki," he said gently, "is everything all right at school? Are your classmates still harassing you?"

It was a moment before his words actually sank in, and Asato remembered where he was enough to answer, "Oh, no, sir. Nothing like that. They're fine. School is just fine."

"Something at home, then?"

That was a bit closer to the truth, but still not the crux of the matter; and Asato really did not want to share his feelings about his older sister with the doctor, no matter how much he trusted him.

When he shook his head, Dr H leaned back and nodded to himself. "I said something to upset you." He took Asato's downcast expression as an affirmative, and reached out and pulled the boy to him, cradling Asato's head against the crook of his armpit in a fatherly gesture. "I don't know what it was," Dr H said, "but I do hope you will forgive me, Tsuzuki. I'm not used to speaking with young people of your generation, sometimes I forget their experiences are different than mine were growing up."

No doubt that was his way of referring to the war, that had touched the lives of the boys and girls all over the country who grew up during its couple of years, whether they had lost a father or older brother in the fighting or had merely glimpsed the soldiers passing through town.

It seemed to Asato, though, that even the doctor, for all his perceptiveness, could not grasp what to him was inherently upsetting in his very own life. To become so inured to the taking of life on a daily basis was a fate that struck Asato as pitiable. Yes, he pitied the elderly man suddenly, strange as it felt to realize that. As the doctor looked down at him and smiled, trying to raise Asato's spirits, his eyes dark behind his glasses that were backlit by the bright sunlight, it was that man who seemed the smaller of the two figures as he was transformed from a stand-in for that shadowy, larger-than-life dream-father or Asato's childhood to an ordinary old man of flesh and blood, who would eventually die just like the patients he tried his very best to save.

Just like the blossoms he clipped from the rose bush.

In that small garden outside the clinic, Asato was struck by this first realization of the true weight of the reality of mortality. And in that light, the doctor's lined smile seemed very sad indeed.

* * *

It was as early as the autumn of that same year that Asato's mother first began to show signs of illness.

It began as a general weariness about her manner that Asato had not noticed present before. While cooking over the stove she would suddenly put the back of her hand to her head and say breathlessly that she needed to sit down, or complain while she was sitting of how exhausted she was. It seemed strange that the usual activities that had occupied her days for so long could all of a sudden have such an adverse effect; she was only just entering her late-thirties and had always been one of those women whose apparent age was deceptive. True for as long as Asato could remember his mother had seemed weighed down by a deep sorrow that was always present behind her eyes, and he was not mistaken in his suspicions that it had much to do with the loss from her life of his father, whom—he came to understand later—she had truly loved more than anything, with the possible exception of Asato himself. For some reason he did not understand at the moment, that constant aura of sorrow had actually begun to lift just as gradually as her body seemed to be slowing down. Though there were faint lines just starting to form around her mouth that Asato had not noticed before, her smiling eyes seemed brighter to him than ever.

Then, as the weather grew colder, the coughing fits came. Unobtrusive at first, they seemed to Asato and his mother to be the work of an ordinary flu; until the weeks had turned into months without their letting up, and Asato could no longer believe his mother when she continued to stick to the same old flu story.

Still, as is the way—nay, not with young children, but with people of any age who are the children of their parents, in his heart Asato refused to believe, as his mother did aloud, that anything serious could be to blame, until the afternoon he came home from school to find a woman he recognized as his mother's friend speaking with a strange man in the foyer of his home.

The two discontinued their conversation when the door opened and turned to stare at him as he entered. Simply by the pitying looks on their faces Asato knew something was wrong; and simply a glance at the black bag the strange man carried told him that man was a doctor. What in the world are they doing here? Asato thought indignantly, but even so he already suspected the answer. It lay heavy in his heart.

"Is mother . . ." he started, but feared to go on.

The woman, as though unable to bear looking at him, turned her face toward the rear of the house, and he heard his mother's voice call out: "Is that Asato I hear? Is he home?"

"She's resting in the other room," the doctor said, but Asato hardly needed his reassurance or warning—or whatever his words were meant to be—as he hurried past the two in the direction of his mother's voice.

He found her lying in her futon, her eyes shining when she saw him in stark contrast to the gazes of the other two that had avoided him; and he knew in that moment that nothing too terrible could be wrong if she were smiling so brightly.

He knelt down beside her and took her hands in his. They were warm and their grip strong. Likewise, when he asked her what had happened, she told him in a voice that showed no sign of physical weakness, "I merely fainted is all. Mrs S was here helping me with the winter clothing," she referred to the woman waiting in the foyer, "and I guess I overworked myself. Thankfully she called a doctor, but I feel much better now. It was unseasonably warm today, wasn't it?"

Asato nodded as she resolutely sat up in bed to prove to him her condition was nothing serious; but when he thought back to it he could remember rubbing his frozen hands together in the schoolyard despite the clearness of the day.

He lacked the will to contradict her, however, preferring to take consolation in his mother's renewed show of strength and dismissive words. If anything were gravely wrong either his mother or the doctor would have said something; and since the man had not said a word about her condition, and his mother insisted she was fine, that was what Asato was content to believe. Perhaps it did occur to him that she could be lying to protect him—or perhaps even to protect herself and continue on in blissful denial—but he pushed that thought to the back of his mind as a mere fiction, a mere hypothesis that had no evidence given to support it.

As though in stubborn rebellion his mother's health showed signs of steady if slight improvement, though all through winter the cold shook its resolve just as her body continued to be shaken by daily coughs. It was only after spring had come, bringing with its pink bursts of plum and cherry blossoms the sense of victory that comes from surviving a storm, that the dark shadow of illness returned cruel and ironic over their household once more. Wracked by a particularly intense fit, his mother coughed up blood and fainted at the sight of it; and the doctor was called to their home once again.

His face expressed his displeasure when he emerged from her room after examination, and he said to Asato in a hushed tone of voice, as though fearful some unseen person might overhear: "Her condition has grown significantly worse since last year."

"The lapse was rather sudden," Asato tried in her defense.

"I see. However, it disappoints me to see she has ignored my recommendations for treatment. If she had, a full recovery might have been likely, but I'm afraid there might not be much I can do for her at this late stage."

Asato started. Recommendations? Treatment? His mother had said nothing to him of the sort. Was it true that all this time she had insisted she was fine she was just pretending after all?

His bewilderment must have been evident on his face, because the doctor's expression suddenly softened with concern and pity. "I thought your mother told you," he said by way of excuse. He opened his mouth to say something else, then thought better of it, but Asato could guess what he had meant to say. She must have begged the doctor not to tell Asato that last time, promising him that she would tell her son herself and had every intention of following his advice. She must have lied to both of them.

But why she would feel the need to do that, when they could have made her well months ago, Asato could not understand.

* * *

Consumption was what they called it, a vague catch-all word for a bunch of wasting diseases no doctor of medicine had a real cure for in those days.

It was a perversely appropriate name. Asato could never ascertain just what it was supposed to refer to. The way his mother was consumed by coughing fits? Or an organism that was slowly consuming her body, wearing down its organs until they were so full of her own blood she had to cough it up? It was horrible to even begin to think about such a thing. It might have been a natural occurrence as the doctor said, but it seemed to Asato an indisputably evil thing, if its entire existence were about nothing more than slowly eating a person from the inside out, until there was nothing left. That such an unholy thing was allowed to exist was an injustice he could not for the life of him reconcile.

However, if there were one good side to his mother's being ill it was that it brought Ruka home.

It was just after that collapse in spring that she returned. As soon as she had heard word of her mother's illness she had left her work in the city, without a single care about the wages she would be losing in doing so. Asato found it difficult at first to believe that Ruka had not heard word of it from their mother the autumn before, but it was useless to dwell on a past no one could change. Their mother's present health was what occupied him now—namely, its improvement—in addition to his school work, the load of which seemed more unbearable than ever now that he was in his last year of primary school.

Asato was not sure how he would have managed without Ruka's supporting presence. While their mother was still able to be up and around, she helped with the cooking and caught up on the cleaning that had fallen behind; and when the weather warmed and their mother was confined most of the day to her bed, Ruka took on the extra workload without so much as a complaint, falling into the motherly role so naturally. Somehow she even convinced their mother to take the medicine the doctor had prescribed, something at which Asato had not been very successful—though all parties involved doubted its ability to do more than lessen the severity of her symptoms.

Asato admired his older sister for having such strength, when it was lacking in their mother and quite often in himself as well. When he came home he would always find her bustling about the house with a constant smile on her face, though it might not have always reached those sorrowful eyes. It was a smile of endurance, tacitly willing him to take strength from its strength. No matter how terrible they seem at the present time, things always turn out for the best, Ruka had told him since he was young, and that smile was a constant reminder of that.

Yet it shamed Asato as well, for once again it made him feel as though their situations should have been reversed, and he was embarrassed by the realization that there really was little he could do to fix his mother and older sister's conditions. He read them stories from the daily paper over breakfast just as Ruka had done once, when she was the same age as he, and took over the job of cooking dinner when he came home from school if Ruka was otherwise occupied (as was more often than not the case).

But these were little things, indeed, and he confessed to Ruka one day how guilty he felt, that he was not yet old enough to make up for the pay his older sister was losing by coming home to take care of their mother. It was an unbearable predicament, putting such a burden on her who deserved it least of all. If only their mother had fallen ill ten years later, he said, when he had a respectable job and enough money to take care of both of them without worry.

Ruka just shook her head. She would hear none of such nonsense, she said: "The very reason I decided to come back was for your sake, Asato." And though he did understand her meaning, it was little consolation, if anything only increasing the heavy weight of being indebted to her, even if she was constantly reassuring him: "This is only what big sisters do, and decent daughters."

Once again her words struck him with such admiration it made his chest hurt, and he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms the way she held him all those years ago, curling up behind him in bed as though her arms were the only thing keeping him from slipping altogether from this plane of existence.

That pain in his chest had changed somehow in her absence, however. It had grown different in a way he could not explain, except perhaps to say he needed her more desperately than ever now, with their mother ill—more desperately even than he had needed her when he was harassed and beaten for his purple eyes. At least then he had known his enemy. It was human. He could not say the same for a disease not even the doctors whose job it was to do so understood. To him her presence here was like a miracle, a blessing in light of such grave unknowns—the time she had been gone seeming so much longer than the nine or so months it had actually been.

It was strange how so much could change between them in that short amount of time—that short amount of time that was the same as the human gestation period. Perhaps it was not stretching the truth to say something had been born with Ruka's return, something that had been gestating in the distance between them the longer she was away, something that had grown inside Asato. Perhaps it was because she had left him nothing to remind him of her face, but it seemed to Asato that Ruka's beauty had grown while she was away, or else he was seeing her existing beauty through new eyes unclouded for the first time by familiarity. He had always mourned the lack of an equal to her saintly beauty in those around him, but now he wondered if it were even possible for any woman to possess such exquisiteness of grace and spirit as she did. And that realization would sometimes stir in him a queer longing that tied knots in his stomach. Her casual touches, her gentle kisses on his temple at night when she thought he was asleep, carried a new weight that filled him at once with rapture and a fear he could not explain.

One day she handed him a photograph while their mother was resting, and said as though she had just remembered the whole thing: "You asked me once in one of your letters if you could have something to remember me by, didn't you? I didn't have anything to give at the time, but now . . ."

It hardly seemed necessary anymore; with her home, he could see Ruka whenever he wanted. He had only to open his eyes. But he nodded and accepted the photograph anyway.

His sister's image, captured on a bright day before the blooming cherry trees, her bright kimono and the smile almost hidden in her white face faded to the indifferent monochrome of sepia, was nevertheless stunning. Asato had never realized before, but there was quite a resemblance to their mother, as she had looked in that wedding portrait taken so many years before. Only the real thing dampened that Ruka's perfection. Still, the Ruka of that moment, captured forever eighteen on fragile celluloid, was smiling more brightly than Asato had ever seen her smile, without the faintest shadow of sorrow to darken it. Was this how his sister looked when she was truly happy? And why had he never been allowed to see it with his own eyes?

Moreover, how had he failed to make her as happy as she had been when this picture was taken?

The answer was there in the leftmost edge of the photograph: the arm of a young man in a Western suit, perhaps even a school uniform, disappearing behind her back. The rest of the young man was missing. The leftmost edge of the photograph was a rough and ragged line indicating some feeling of regret or anger or despair possessed by some Ruka between the one in the photograph and the one of the present. Yet even that was something to be jealous of—something that caused that dark thing within Asato to rear its head as bitter envy stabbed him like a knife. Who was the young man who had been torn from the photograph? Who had been privy to a life from which Ruka had shut her own brother? Who was it who had made Ruka as happy as Asato himself had never been able to, and so angry as well? For someone like Ruka to tear him from something as precious as a photograph—she must have loved him very much.

Asato did not ask her about the identity of the young man in such a way as that, but his curiosity was too great for him to remain silent. But Ruka just shrugged and told him nonchalantly not to worry about it, which was worse than saying nothing at all.

She probably had not meant it as such, but it seemed to Asato utterly cruel of her to be giving him such a photograph, even if he had asked for one. Any photograph would have done, except that one. But he could not refuse it either. She was so beautiful in it. And in just that one moment of holding the photograph, it had become something irreversibly precious to him he could not give up if it had to be pried from his fingers.

* * *

How far the happiness of that photograph was from the resilient smiles on Ruka's face these dark days was apparent now that Asato had something with which to compare them. Now he saw through the falseness of those smiles to the sorrow and frustration that brooded just beneath them, and Ruka's genuine desire to hide her foreboding from him and pretend that all was well.

Their mother was dying. That was a fact that was accepted by all, though its reality may have been considerably slower to sink in. Asato could not be sure even his mother understood the ramifications, as she faced everyone who came to wish for her recovery with the introverted smile of a buddha. Perhaps the disease had made her delusional, was all Asato could think, for she spoke now with a distant look in her dark eyes that seemed to have seen the darkness of death already, and had no fear of it.

The doctor, whose profession abhorred frank predictions of a patient's death, had become quite good at avoiding the topic of the terminal nature of the disease. But Asato's mother seemed to all appearances to have made her peace with it. One afternoon as Asato was helping her to bed, she took his hands in hers, seeing the anxiety about her rapidly degrading condition that showed clearly on his face. She asked him the matter, and he could hardly face her as he said in a small voice: "Mother . . . is it true what everyone's been saying? Because I don't believe it. I believe like the doctor says that you're going to get better. You have to."

For me, and for Ruka, he thought, you have to.

His mother looked at him with such pity in her dark eyes, however, that he felt his conviction shake.

"It's all right, Asato," she told him softly—in that same distant way in which she had addressed the well-wishers. "Be strong, for your sister. Don't be sad or afraid. I know I'm not."

He put on a resolute smile, even if he did not feel it in his heart, as he asked why not.

"Because I know that soon I will be seeing your father again, and how can I be afraid of that?" She turned to him and raised herself slightly in a renewed burst of energy. "When I look in your eyes, Asato, I could almost swear I can see him already, and it gives me such strength—"

"But father's not dead," Asato said, shaking her hand in his, though it seemed the one he most needed to convince was himself. "And you're not going to die either. Not yet, not by a long shot. You're going to get well again." Each proclamation felt less and less like the truth, but he had to go on, if only for his own sake. "I just know it.

"And anyway, how can you be so sure he is dead?" Because Asato was sure he would have felt it in his bones.

His mother smiled as she looked into the air over his shoulder, and said in a voice just above a whisper that was filled with so much adoration it made him envious: "Because he told me himself that he'd be waiting for me. 'On the other side of this life.'"

She wouldn't say any more on the subject, but left Asato those words to ponder in silent despair.

It seemed that the number of people around them who continued to hold to the belief that his mother would get well was shrinking by the week. Asato resented it; for each time someone's mindset turned, it was as though they had invited ill omen into the Tsuzuki home with them.

His uncle was one of the worst offenders. Since Asato was a child he had never shown Asato anything but indifference at best and suspicion at worst. It was not because of anything Asato had done to him, but rather because of Asato's father and his mother's disgrace, and the reminders of them that he carried with him constantly. His young wife was not much better, but at least her coolness was bred from unfamiliarity. She was only half a decade older than Ruka, and she tried to treat Ruka as if she were a younger sister, though neither Ruka nor Asato could find it within themselves to warm to her. To Asato especially, his mother's younger brother came off as impetuous, and he vowed he would never treat Ruka the way that man treated their mother. "You must make out a will," he would say each time he and his wife visited the house, "now before it is too late. Think of your children."

But Asato wondered if it was not his own well-being he had in mind. If he wasn't impatient for their mother to leave him an inheritance—as there was nothing to leave—then he was certainly concerned about being saddled with Asato's care. As is the natural way with older sisters, his mother was patient with his uncle, and agreed with the logic of his urging, even if Asato himself found it more selfish than logical. An attorney dropped by a few times; he was always on his way out the door when Asato saw him upon arriving home from school.

Despite her own best efforts, Ruka's smile was also affected by what to Asato was their mother's fatalistic thinking. It slipped more and more often, allowing the frustration to show through in greater frequency as their mother's condition worsened. "She's never going to get better with a mindset like that," Asato would sometimes hear her muttering to herself when she thought no one was within earshot. What a great burden it must be on his older sister, he thought at times like those, who was so recently dependent on their mother, to suddenly have that parent dependent on her without so much as a savings to fall back upon. It would wear on any young woman, but perhaps because he was so unused to seeing such a side of Ruka—whether because she had hidden it from Asato in the past or his mind steadfastly ignored it—it was difficult for him to reconcile the gentle-hearted Ruka he loved so dearly with the one who sighed after their mother and slammed down pots in the kitchen.

She cried a lot these days, Asato knew, even if his older sister hid her tears from him. It seemed so alien to see her struggle with her emotions, in light of their mother's queer contentedness, her calm graciousness, that day after day seemed the only thing about her person that had not grown increasingly fragile.

Such as one warm morning while, as they ate breakfast around the small table which was about the most physical activity their mother could bring herself to do anymore, their mother very slowly put down her chopsticks, fixed a distant expression on the sliding doors, and said cheerfully, and as though the person in question were not in the room: "Do you know what would make me very happy? I would so like to see Ruka settle down with a nice young man before I go. It's a mother's greatest dream to see her daughter happily married, and I only wish I could see it fulfilled."

Asato glanced at his mother, wondering which of them she was speaking to.

But the sound of Ruka slamming her bowl down onto the table made him jump. He turned to look at her, catching a glimpse of her tightly closed lips and wet eyes. Their mother hardly even noticed. She said nothing, even when Ruka quietly excused herself, rose from the table, and hurried from the room.

Asato hurried after her.

It had seemed like an earnest enough thing for their mother to say—with no ulterior motives beneath it that Asato could detect, at least—so why was Ruka so angry with their mother? When he stopped her and asked her, she looked as though she might burst into tears right there, her dark eyes filled with such sadness as she gazed at him.

"Oh, Asato," she said, "I'm not angry with mother. Just frustrated is all. I know she only says such things because she wants to know I'll have someone to look after me when she's gone.

"Someone besides you," she added with a sad smile when she saw him open his mouth.

"Then why does she frustrate you? Because you don't want to get married?"

Maybe that was not the best way to put it. But Ruka closed her mouth in a tight line and looked down at the floor. "That isn't it," she said after a while. "But if I told you . . . Oh, you would hate me! You wouldn't understand."

"Understand what?"

She took a deep breath before continuing, as though every word were a terrible pain she were enduring. "You have such a generous soul, Asato," she began slowly, "it may be difficult for you to understand. People like you . . . to them it is no trouble at all to love so many people unconditionally, each with all their heart; and no matter how many people you love it does not fill up. Not ever. But mother is not one of those people."

Ruka would not look him in the eye as she murmured solemnly, "She can't do that. Her heart never learned that it   
doesn't have to run out of room. Oh, she loves you with everything she has. She loved your father like that, too. But there's only so much room in a heart like that, for only so many people."

In the grips of a sudden panic, Asato blurted out, "Then what about you?"

Ruka's sad smile would have said enough. But she said instead: "Please, don't hold it against mother. She can't help who she is, no more than you can help who you are."

"But you're her child, too. You're my sister!"

Asato could hardly believe what Ruka was telling him. Did that mean their mother didn't love her? That the adoration for her own daughter that should have been so natural had been usurped by Asato at his birth? It was preposterous. And yet it made some sense as well. What a terrible woman their mother was, he thought though he loathed himself for doing so—even if it were a trait that was as innate in her person as his strange eyes were inborn in his, something beyond her control. If he had never been born, then was it not true that the affection their mother showered on him would have gone completely to Ruka? Once again, everything returned to that simple truth: that his very existence was a thorn in Ruka's.

She must have thought he misunderstood her—though Asato thought he understood perfectly—for she said quickly: "I knew I should not have said anything. You must hate me for saying such a thing about our own mother, especially at a time like this."

"No." He shook his head with conviction. "How could I hate you?"

"Then please, for my sake, don't hate mother because of what I've said."

Asato hated to see Ruka plead. However, it seemed this was one time when he could not oblige her wishes.

No, he could not say that he hated their mother. But no matter how he tried, the more he dwelled on what Ruka had told him the more he resented their mother's inability to love Ruka as equally as she did him. Perhaps his older sister should have never told him her suspicions, but if she hadn't would he have been any better off? To live in blissful ignorance of his sister's plight, or to be forever changed by the consciousness of their mother's inner betrayal at his birth—one was not necessarily less painful than the other.

No doubt Ruka's intentions had been pure, but Asato could not help seeing his mother with changed eyes. Even his childhood memories returned filtered through the lenses of this new information. Though she was gravely ill, he could not rid himself of the niggling feeling that everything their mother did or said these days was clouded by selfishness. He knew such thinking was the product of that dark thing inside him, but it was only too easy to embrace the truth in its logic.

He could hardly stand to look at his mother after that, let alone tend to her as faithfully as he once had. The heat and humidity of summer made her body thin and her stamina weak, as it seemed to do nothing but feed the disease living inside her, keeping her confined to her bed. To look at her now was to stare mortality in the face, and that was a reality the likes of which Asato could not face above all, for to do so would be the same as admitting defeat to the disease. It would be no different than consigning his mother to a sure death. It was like embracing the knowledge that he and Ruka, too, would someday suffer and die.

However, more than that, Ruka's words to him about their mother would not leave him in peace. Even the illness seemed to him a selfish thing their mother clung to, cruelly indifferent to her children's suffering; and, moreover, cruelly indifferent to the bitter fact that without her they became orphans. True Ruka was a grown woman, but where had she to go but back to the tailors in town—which was still more than could be said for Asato, who would have to rely on the charity of family whom he had only rarely seen, and who certainly did not want him and never had. To die at such a time was irresponsible, to say the least. For what decent woman would willingly choose such a fate for her children, while dreaming of reunion with a lover she would probably never see again one way or the other?

It made Asato so angry to think such things; and when he examined that anger that he knew his mother did not deserve, he in turn became angry with himself. In one way or the other, his emotions conspired to keep him away from home: Away from the relatives and old family friends who treated him like a pest to be tolerated. Away from the doctor with his medicinal smell and regular visits that accomplished nothing. From the ashen face of his mother, and the sickly air that hung about the house like dust.

And away from Ruka, who had the power to at once shame him with her loyalty to a mother that by her own words could not love her as she should, and rend his heart with the perpetual futility of her existence in that house. It was all so painful for him, but he could not face her most of all. If it did occur to him that he was abandoning her when she needed him most, the one thing he swore he would never do, he quickly convinced himself the situation was otherwise. It was too difficult any other way. The way they all treated him just went to show it was better for all involved if he just stayed far away.

* * *

Dr H became once again his only confidante, the only man in his life whose perspective he trusted. Dr H was always sincere with him, he told himself, no matter what the issue. He alone treated Asato like an adult.

And he shared Asato's belief that it was not beyond his mother to get well again. At least, when Asato said so with such conviction, he never argued and always had some encouraging word to bolster the boy's spirits.

The Meiji emperor passed away that summer, and not long after General Nogi and his wife followed him by committing ritual suicide. The nation was plunged into mourning, not just for their ruler but for the modern age into which he had brought their country. For many who had lived the greater part of their lives, if not all of it, in that glorious period, there was a real sense of the unknown lurking around the bend, for it seemed impossible to imagine anything could follow that period's great heights but a period of decline.

To many men like Dr H, however, it was General Nogi's death that touched them the greatest. Whether out of nostalgia or something more universal, they spoke of honor and loyalty with fond, distant looks in their eyes and seemed to hold him up as some sort of great national hero in his death. Some even suggested he should be deified. When Asato went to visit the doctor at his clinic during those long summer days, it seemed his eyes were always glued to the newspaper, in which every day there would be someone praising General Nogi's patriotism.

It was only when Asato said in a huff of disgust, "I don't think it was patriotic what he did at all!" that the doctor was shaken out of his reverie, as though noticing Asato's presence for the first time.

He fixed the boy an astonished look. "You don't?"

Asato shook his head.

"His loyalty doesn't move you one bit?"

"Not at all." Then, realizing how unpatriotic he sounded himself, compared to all those he heard at school and in town gushing tearfully about Nogi's self-sacrifice, he revised, "That is, it's not as though I have something against his loyalty to the emperor. I just think it was selfish of the General to kill himself for the emperor for no reason."

"No reason? I don't know, Tsuzuki, I'm sure many would say redemption and honor were reason enough."

"But it's irresponsible! He left the country without his leadership—and not because he was dying himself, or because anyone asked him to, but because he felt like it. How can you tell me that isn't selfish?"

Dr H hummed in thought as he sat back and folded the newspaper. "I guess I can see your point. However . . ."

Feeling humbled by the doctor's admission, Asato said in a lower voice, in his own defense: "I just think he should have thought about what the rest of us are going to do, is all."

Something in his manner or his words made the doctor suddenly grow quiet, and he said in a gentler, more understanding tone of voice, "We're not talking about General Nogi anymore, are we?"

Asato looked up at him. It hurt even trying to admit Dr H was right, bringing tears to his eyes that never fell. He hung his head in place of a nod.

"Shouldn't you be at home with your mother?" Dr H said. "I'm sure she's worried sick about you."

"She knows where I am," Asato answered in a tiny croak.

"That's not what I mean."

He meant that Asato's mother was dying, and that every moment she had left with her child would be precious to her—as it should have been to him. But they both knew he would not say it out loud, as he had made a tacit promise to Asato not to speak of death, even if it meant pretending a terminal disease was anything but. "Shouldn't you be helping her through this trying time in her life?" he asked instead. "I think that's what she would want—"

"How would you know? You wouldn't understand."

"On the contrary! Tsuzuki . . . as a doctor I deal with this sort of situation almost on a daily basis, but I tell you this now not as a doctor but out of personal experience. As someone's son. That there is nothing I wouldn't have given for another minute with my mother, just to say all the things I never had the chance to—"

"She isn't dying!" Asato yelled.

The doctor's old shoulders slumped as though with the unbearable weight of pity. "Tsuzuki . . ."

"She isn't! She couldn't," he said, nodding to himself. "She wouldn't do that to me and Ruka. She just wouldn't!"

"Because that would be irresponsible?"

Asato looked up. He couldn't stand the way Dr H was staring at him, as though he were a poor downtrodden animal. There was no reason for his sympathy, he told himself: there was nothing wrong. How could he, whom Asato had trusted most to see things his way, say such a thing about his mother?

On some level deep down within himself, however, Asato knew he only reacted in such a way because it was true. Every bit of it. That was exactly how he felt. And it wasn't a very fitting way for a son who loved his mother to think.

"Tsuzuki," Dr H began again, "don't you think these are feelings everyone experiences at some point in his life? It's nothing to be ashamed about. So why don't you go home, and be with your mother—for her sake if nothing else."

He went to put his hand on Asato's shoulder, but Asato shrugged it off with a violence that surprised the doctor: The boy had never reacted to him that way before. "How could you do this to me?" Asato wailed. "I thought I could talk to you—I believed what you said—"

"You believed what you wanted to believe, Tsuzuki. That's all. Look, I'm sorry if I mislead you in any way, if I gave you false hope, but . . . I didn't want to hurt you any more than you were already hurting!"

But Asato would hear none of it. He flew out the door with the doctor's words stumbling after him, into the summer garden with its bushes of roses blooming magnificently in the sweltering summer heat. He could hardly bear to look at those roses as he went by—those roses which he used to be so fond of, and used to look forward to seeing. It just seemed so callous, that anything could be thriving so happily while he suffered like this. He suffered, and no one cared.

He mounted his bicycle and kicked off the pavement, wanting nothing more at that moment than to put a great deal of distance between himself and that rose garden, and the elderly doctor who no doubt had come out to stare after him. Asato did not look back. I hate him, he said in his mind. Even if he hadn't meant to, it still seemed as though he had betrayed Asato.

Just like that man betrayed mother, he thought. That man I've been thinking of all this time as my father. But what has he ever done for me? He probably never wanted me after all—that must be why he left. I'm sure of it. He isn't dead. He's just a selfish, lying coward. He's never done anything for me, and he's never done anything for mother. He probably wouldn't even care that she's sick.

How could she have ever loved a man like him? I hate him. I hate him I hate him I hate him!

The sky was overcast with dark gray clouds, but it was not raindrops he felt falling on the back of his hands as he pedaled with all his might. He sniffed and wiped away his tears with the back of his hand to clear his vision, and that was when he felt their sting. He choked back the sob that rose in his throat, concentrating on the road in front of him. The press of people was suddenly unbearable.

He swerved off the street into a shady park, where the cicadas were chirping madly even under the threat of rain, and the leaves on their trees rustled in anticipation. Under that muggy air he stumbled off the bike and ran for the shelter of the trees, where, far from human eyes, he hugged his knees to his chest and wished to disappear into the dirt he sat on and the trunk against which he leaned his back. Just as he had years ago when he had run from the boys who beat him, he prayed in vain that they might absorb him into their selves and rescue him from this existence. It didn't matter to him where they might take him. It couldn't be any worse than here, where he didn't belong anyway.

The whole world seemed against him—the whole world outside of this park, which, welcoming though its embrace was, could not console him, and remained ignorant of his agony. No matter what he did, he could feel it slowly tearing his mother and sister from his grasp. Just as it had torn away that man who left him this shameful life, and Ruka's father, and the Meiji emperor—and countless other men he did not know how to mourn. And now he had lost his best friend to it as well.

* * *

He would have stayed in that park forever if he were able to, until it finally had no choice but to absorb him, even if all that was left to absorb was the rotting flesh and blood of a corpse of a twelve-year-old boy. Yet somehow his body of its own accord dragged him back home, if not to his mother's bedside then at least to Ruka's sorrowful eyes and distracted cooking. Class continued as always; time did not stop for the Meiji emperor, and it certainly did not stop for him.

The rain came, and when it did it fell for days on end. The sound of big, thick raindrops pounding on the tiles of the roof and dripping from the eaves kept him awake at night. It drowned out Ruka's stifled sobs, but it could not drown out the sound of his mother coughing in the other room. For days on end it would fall, soaking everything in sight and snapping the delicate stems of flowers only to leave in its reprieve a muggy calm as oppressive as a wool coat worn in a sauna.

In a strange way, Asato actually welcomed the oppressive weather, for it felt at last as though he had been granted an externalization of the heavy and sluggish turmoil of emotions that was locked away within his heart; and when people complained of its leaving them utterly unable to be comfortable he felt justified, eager to say, See? This is what it has been like for me all along, and it never let up. What do you really have to complain about, you people who have only suffered a couple of days? This has been my existence for years. The sight of respectable men in shirtsleeves fanning themselves with newspapers and women showing damp necks beneath the collars of their kimono was to him a taste, however unsatisfying, of retribution. It never crossed his mind that that weather he embraced masochistically might be killing his mother.

He watched those suffering people from the park, to which he ran after the final bell. Classmates asked after the disappearance of his smile and usual good humor, but even their concern was selfish, or at least blind to the plight that awaited him at home. Afraid to return there, and unwilling to open his heart to those boys and girls whose relation to him would undoubtedly change as a result—just as he was unwilling to face Dr H after the embarrassment of his last outburst—the emptiness of the park in the muggiest part of summer became his only escape. Looking back on it, he wasn't sure what he had done while he was there other than sit and stew in the heat, and resist the instinctual urge to return home until his stomach would permit it no longer. Even the rain was no deterrent. He had never caught pneumonia—a fact that came with some irony now—and he was beyond caring about his clothing or who would have to clean them. He never cried those afternoons; the cicadas did that for him.

He had stolen the photograph of his parents from the family shrine some time ago. In a fit of frustration and hatred while Ruka and their relatives had left the house momentarily empty, and his mother lay asleep in her room, Asato had dashed that picture to the kitchen floor until the glass in the frame cracked and shattered. He had been unable to throw out the photograph, however, no matter how disgusted he was with those two smiling figures out of the past, and had removed it from the frame instead and kept it folded in his pocket. His mother would never know the difference anyway, he figured; she was bedridden now, and she seemed to have a pretty clear picture of his father in her mind these days.

He had not been able to bring himself to look at the photograph since then, but now under the shade of the zelkova trees he pulled it out of his pocket and unfolded it, gently smoothing out the creases against his thigh. As he stared at the sepia faces of his parents, he tried to recall the resentment he had felt for them earlier that had prompted him to break that picture frame, but it remained stubbornly in remission. Against his will he longed for them both, and for the childhood he had often dreamed about that had never been his.

And he wondered what he was doing there, foolishly trying with all his might to hate these people who had once been so happy. Was it their happiness that he resented so much? Was it because that happiness had never been his to begin with—aside from what fumes of its burnt-up fuel he was left to survive on in infancy—though he was a product of it himself?

He heard the first patter of warm raindrops falling on the canopy of leaves above him before he felt them. A single drop fell on his mother's face in the photograph, and he quickly wiped it away in horror. The way the rain warped her features in that half a second frightened him, filling him with an ominous feeling he was compelled to kill immediately. He knew he should return home, as he folded the photograph again and put it safely in his pocket, but that same fear moved his feet in a different direction, under the awnings of storefronts in town.

There Asato slipped inside a small Western-style cafe and ordered a piece of cake. Money, always tight, was even tighter these days; and he knew Ruka had entrusted that money to him to buy groceries. But in a spirit of rebelliousness he slammed the coins down on the counter of that cafe instead. The slice of cake didn't even pique his appetite like it usually did. The bright red of fresh strawberries on top of buttery cream seemed to be mocking him, twisting his stomach in knots. But he had nothing left if he did not have his resentment. He chewed and swallowed large forkfuls of cake anyway, as though in doing so he might find his anger again in a stomach full of sweets, but all it brought up from within him was the stinging feeling of welling tears.

Sitting at that cafe bar, he was struck by an urgency he could no longer ignore. Maybe it was something in the way the afternoon had grown suddenly dark, or a distant roll of thunder prickling with static electricity. An overwhelming feeling of repulsion and guilt knocked him stumbling from his stool and pushed him out the door. If the warm rain did not soak him in minutes, the splash of water collected in the puddles his hurrying feet landed in finished the job, but he did not care. It was a fear stronger than any he had felt before that drove him on at a sprint, a fear that pulled him to his house like a magnet. Asato thought he had never run so hard in his life, except perhaps when the boys of that small town had been chasing him, and this time speed was no less important.

He came to an abrupt stop at the gate of his home. A sense of dark and quiet hung about the house like he had never known before, and it hit him like running into a wall. It's just my imagination, that ominous quiet, Asato told himself as he stepped inside and made his way up the walk. It's only because of the bad weather. When I step inside, everything will be the way it always was. It has to be.

But when he opened the door he found Mrs S standing on the landing in worried silence, refusing to look at him just as she had that clear day last autumn. What she was doing there once more, Asato told himself he did not want to: her presence was an ill omen he could do without. His gaze searched out his older sister, first in the parlor and the dining room, but he caught sight of her in neither place, and there were no sounds nor aromas coming from the kitchen.

Then Asato saw his uncle standing in the hall, his arm around his wife's shoulders in an uncharacteristic display of affection, and he knew.

He felt his heart beating wildly in his chest. The doctor was just stepping out of his mother's room. The silence that followed him was oppressive, as though Asato had gone suddenly deaf upon stepping into the house. "What's going on?" Asato demanded of the man. "Why is everyone here? Where's Ruka?"

The doctor knitted his brow as though Asato had physically assaulted him. "Son," he began, though he needn't have said any more than that, "it pains me to have to tell you this, but your mother—"

"No!"

Asato would not let him finish. He pushed bodily past the man and into his mother's room, where Ruka was kneeling beside their mother's futon. He fell to his own knees on the other side of his mother's body and felt for her hand beneath the quilt, muttering as he did so, "No, it isn't true. It isn't." Her hand in his was still warm and dry, and her face when he gazed at it still showed a faint blush of life in her cheeks and beads of sweat on her brow. Her eyes were closed in a peaceful expression and her pale lips turned slightly upward in a smile, as though she were in the middle of a fond dream.

"What are you all looking like that for? She's just sleeping," he said aloud, in hopes the sound of his voice might cut through the grave silence and make it so. "That's all." That had to be it. She looked too peaceful, too beautiful to be dead. Yet his voice wavered, and no one else would utter a word in agreement. It was up to him alone to prove it. Asato put his hands on his mother's shoulders and shook her gently, pleading with her to wake up. Sometimes it took a moment, he tried to explain, but the words caught in his throat. She didn't wake. She didn't even stir.

But if his mother really were dead, wouldn't she feel different in his arms?

"Do something!" he yelled to those who waited out in the hall when his efforts failed to revive her. He clutched his mother's hand but she wasn't responding. If she was still warm, didn't that mean they still had time? Didn't that mean it wasn't too late? "Why are you all just standing around? Why isn't anyone doing anything!"

"Where have you been, Asato?"

Asato looked up at the intrusion of the harsh voice of his uncle. That man and his wife had slipped back into the room, as had the doctor, who alone stared at Asato with sympathetic eyes. For the first time Asato noticed that Ruka was crying across the futon from him. Though she tried her best to stifle her sobs with her sleeve, he could hear her hitched breathing behind the fabric, that to him was the most painful sound in the world. He wanted so much to reach out to her, but the others standing about them like vultures impatient for a corpse made him freeze.

"I asked you where you've been," his uncle said again. His eyes were wide as though he were astonished at Asato's audacity to return here. "Do you know your mother was asking for you all afternoon? She was still asking for you when she finally slipped away."

Asato couldn't answer. He bit his lip as the tears flowed freely down his cheeks, leaving dark spots where they and the rain dripping from his hair wet his mother's clothes. He could feel the thing inside him bristling like a wounded animal with anger at that man's accusing words, and he feared if he allowed himself to utter a single word in response he would lose control of it in front of all these people. In front of his mother and Ruka. He could not allow that to happen. He would not give those vultures the satisfaction.

He jumped to his feet and flew out the door. Ruka reached for him and cried his name, but he ignored her. He grabbed his bicycle from the yard and headed for the one remaining person to whom he could think of to turn. If his own family, his mother's own doctor was not going to do a thing to help her, then maybe that person would. There was no one else. Everyone else had abandoned him and his mother.

When Asato finally arrived at Dr H's clinic, he left the bicycle forgotten on the step and pounded on the door, calling for the doctor. The old man's eyes went wide behind his glasses when he answered, and he ushered Asato into the room, remarking, "Tsuzuki, you're drenched. What in the world happened?"

Apparently he seemed most concerned that the boy was going to catch a chill.

Asato hardly managed to speak coherently through his tears, sobbing, "Please, sir . . . It's my mother. She's sick. She needs help right away and everyone's just standing there—"

"Try to calm down," the doctor told him apologetically, shaking his head. "I can't understand you, Tsuzuki."

"She's dying! And no one will do a thing to help her! They just let her lie there and do nothing. . . ."

As Asato wiped away his tears, the doctor's shoulders slumped and he could find nothing to say.

"Please," Asato said. "You have to help her. She isn't moving. She isn't moving at all. I tried! I tried calling her, but she just wouldn't wake up—"

His last syllables faded in a whimper of despair and Dr H pulled him into his arms. This time Asato could not refuse if he had even had the strength to. He clung to that man who was like a grandfather to him and buried his cries in his waistcoat. The hand that stroked his hair to calm him only coaxed out more tears, and made his insides twist in an agony so great he wondered if he might die of it. He felt his knees shake and gripped the doctor's shirt sleeves even tighter, though by the other's reassuring words he knew the doctor would not let him fall.

The gratitude the boy suddenly felt was almost as overwhelming as his grief, and with it came the heavy weight of guilt, threatening to sink him like an anchor. Everything Dr H had said to him was true. The only one who had been selfish was he—and what Asato wouldn't give to undo it all! But the elderly doctor needed no apology for what had passed between them the last time; it had not even crossed his mind. Surely Asato did not deserve such kindness as this, after all that he had said in his heart. Let alone after spending grocery money on sweets while his mother lay dying, though knowing that man he would probably even forgive Asato such a sin.

Dr H did not tell Asato everything would be all right. He knew the boy well enough to know that was not what he needed to hear. Instead he merely allowed everything that had been buried inside Asato to flow out—no lies, and no judgments. "It's all my fault," Asato choked out against his chest. "I wasn't there . . ."

"You didn't know," the doctor said gently against his hair. "How could you?"

"But you don't understand. It's all my fault mother got sick. If I had never been born . . ." He squeezed his eyes shut. She would have been better off if he were dead. "I couldn't save her!"

"There was nothing you could have done, Tsuzuki," the doctor told him resolutely, and his voice seemed to Asato like a single lifesaver keeping him afloat, even if he couldn't so easily believe the words. "It's only natural to feel responsible, but there wasn't anything you could have done. Not against a disease like that. I swear it."

Asato wanted so much to believe that, even if to do so was impossible at the moment. Even if he was presently filled with such hatred for his pathetic self a part of him wanted to give up on everything, if in doing so he could somehow bring his mother back, and wipe away Ruka's tears. He looked up at the doctor's face, which showed its age under the shadow of his sympathetic grieving. For a moment he wished that man were really his father, because he hadn't the slightest idea of where he was going to go now, or what he was going to do.

He wasn't sure when he fell asleep either, only that he woke later that evening on the seat of Dr H's Model 20 to the rumbling of the engine and the jerkiness of the road beneath his body. The rain was still falling on the canopy of the car, though the day had turned even darker and the street lanterns were already lit. His clothes were still wet, and though it should have been the least of his concerns, he felt sorry that the one time the doctor took him for a ride in his automobile Asato had to get rain water on the seats. For that matter, he regretted for the doctor's sake that it had to be under these sad circumstances. He truly owed that man so much, he thought, that he could never repay if he lived a hundred years.

Ruka was there to greet him when he arrived. She threw her arms around him heedless of all those who surrounded them and walked him back into the house. Her sleeves like the wings of a mother bird shielded him from all the unfamiliar faces, and from his uncle's displeasure. She smiled as she said in a tearful voice that she had been sick with worry about him, though there were no more tears that she could shed.

The rest followed like something in a dream, hazy and shadowed and only vaguely remembered when consciousness became clear once again. Which it eventually did, though it seemed at the time it never would. Time did not stop.


	3. Chapter 3

In the days that followed, it came to light that money had not been as tight for the Tsuzuki family as its children were brought up to believe. Neither was it true that Asato's wealthy father had left them with nothing at all. It was only after his mother's passing that they learned the true sum of what he had left, and that amount was in fact a small fortune. This came as quite a surprise to Asato and his uncle, who had both clung to their respective disdain for Asato's father until his mother's will brought this new information to the surface; as well as to Ruka, whose memory of that man was little more than the nebulous, impressionistic memory of a six-year-old child.

According to the will, that sum was to become the sole property of Asato, and follow him to the house of his uncle into whose care he had been signed. After all, was his mother's logic, the money had once belonged to Asato's father and was given with the intent to support that child. Likewise, Ruka's inheritance was to come from her own father's legacy, from the late Mr Tsuzuki's government pension—which was very little indeed—and from her mother's most prized possessions, including her wedding gowns which she had safeguarded through every bump in the road in the unfulfilled hopes of seeing her daughter married within her lifetime.

As was Ruka's way, if this arrangement ever once struck her as unfair or unbalanced she never let on, for she never complained—though as far as Asato was concerned she would have been justified in doing so. He would have given her his inheritance himself if he were able, just to repay all she had done for him, and because he loved her. The money mattered little to him; with their mother gone, his older sister was all he had left in the world, and he hated more than anything to see her go, once again, to the tailor's in the city. No matter how many times she reassured him that she was a grown woman who could take care of her own, he worried about her when he could not watch over her, and despaired of her leaving him to fend for himself in the household of their uncle and his wife.

They saw each other sometimes, of course, Ruka and Asato, after he had moved into his uncle's house—a house the atmosphere of which was markedly different from that of his mother's. Asato's uncle and aunt were a modern couple, and their home and lifestyle reflected that. He was on his way to becoming the manager of a department store, and she kept abreast of the latest fashions. It seemed there was always some lady friend of hers over for afternoon tea, and whenever that happened, Asato was expected to stay out of sight.

It was more for his aunt's sake than for the sake of her friends, however, as on the rare occasion he ran into any of them, they would always comment on his good looks and humble manners, and all seemed to agree that he wore the latest fashions out of Europe for young men his age as though they had been made with him in mind.

It was enough to make a young man like Asato beam with pride—and at times like that it was easy to lose sight of the reality that his presence in that home was not as welcome as the kind words of a family friend might lead him to believe. His uncle's wife had never been as stern with him as his uncle had, so it came as a bit of a surprise to the boy when he overheard a conversation between the two about him some months into his stay.

"I can't take much more of this," Asato's aunt was saying, her voice hushed as she spoke with uncharacteristic frankness to her husband. "I thought it would be fine to be left alone in the house with him, but he gives me the creeps. He's so quiet when he comes home and . . . It's those eyes. Those eyes, they . . . I never know what he's thinking, what he's going to do. I wish they would let you come home earlier just so I wouldn't have to be alone with him for so long."

"Do you mean you're actually afraid he might do something to hurt you?" Asato's uncle asked incredulously. He might not have known Asato's character very well, nor cared to correct that, but apparently he thought he knew him well enough to wonder if his wife were even talking about the same boy. "Why? Has he said anything strange?"

"I guess not," his wife relented. "But haven't you noticed how people look at us differently ever since we took him in? Forget charity. It's almost like they think we're cursed or something. Even if they don't know he's a bastard child, they always have a way of asking about it anyway. 'Where'd he get eyes like that? Was his father a foreigner?' I can't keep avoiding the topic forever, you know!"

She lowered her voice. "I know most of the time people are just joking when they call him an ill omen, but I can't help beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth to it. Why else would they say something like that? I'm telling you, this isn't good for my health. He's caused me nothing but worry since he's been here. And how do you know it wasn't something to do with him that was to blame for your sister's illness? Damn this generosity of yours! I was fine when it was your mother living with us, but why did you have to take _him_ in? Not for her sake, I'm sure. For that inheritance of his? Because if that's the case then I wish you would hurry up and do something about it and end my misery! Why should _I_ have to put up with him? He isn't _my_ nephew—"

His aunt went suddenly silent. Asato could not see what was happening, but she must have put her hand over her mouth when she realized just what she had said. Asato himself had never heard his uncle's wife voice her feelings so openly or long-windedly before, and she was quick to apologize to her husband for it.

He waited for his uncle to refute her claims, tell her that he was not after Asato's money after all, that it was out of filial love and obligation to his sister that he had taken her son in, but that never happened. In any case, by the next spring they had solved his aunt's most pressing problem: they enrolled Asato in a preparatory middle and high school that was also a boarding school.

Perhaps it did cross Asato's mind that attending a boarding school was in some ways like being sent to an orphanage. For his uncle it was simply a way of dumping him in someone else's care far away from his own home; but Asato would have been foolish to wish to stay willingly in a household where he was not welcomed, and treated with an increasingly thinly veiled resentment, any longer. In this way he had no choice but to welcome the change and adapt. He had already lost everything that truly mattered to him with his mother's death the year before, anyway.

This new opportunity was, on the other hand, a kind of rebirth; and he, like a cicada coming out of the ground which had nurtured it in warm, dark comfort for so long, was ready to appreciate the world into which he had been thrust with a determination to endure. The boys who attended class with him were of like mind, and were willing to overlook shortcomings like strangely colored eyes or the lack of a father that would have earned him a good ribbing back at his old school in the country. Instead, they warmed to his fresh sense of humor that temporarily took their minds off their studies and problems at home; and even if Asato couldn't say he had any close friends, he filled a particular purpose for his peers, and in that sense he felt as though he belonged.

The other boys called him Tsuzuki, like the doctor had; and even though his aunt and uncle had often reminded him it was not his name—not by blood, at least, only legally—his peers said it with such fondness that it became his simply by the frequency of its usage. So it seemed in the boy's thirteenth year as though the life that was Asato's had been thoroughly put to rest, and the person who was Tsuzuki was just beginning to live.

* * *

There was little about life at that school that Tsuzuki could complain of. He was surrounded by boys his age who treated him, for once in his life, as if he belonged; the teachers were strict, but they were still rather preferable to his uncle and uncle's wife; and even though it was a school for boys, there was no shortage of local girls to tease as they passed by school grounds on their way to do shopping. Yet Tsuzuki too often found himself unable to concentrate on his studies and falling into a restless sort of ennui that none of his peers' games could alleviate. When the other boys teased one another about girls, his thoughts would return to Ruka, and he would miss her so much he ached inside.

Ruka did come to visit him on her holidays, however few and far between those were. She was not comfortable being around so many adolescent boys, Tsuzuki could see when she did brave the school grounds, her limbs and effects all held tightly to her person. She would often implore him as to why he did not return to their uncle's home more often, welcomed or not, so that she might visit him there instead; but both understood without need for words that even she would have returned to their relatives' home only reluctantly if their situations had been reversed.

Therefore, if only for his sake, she made the trip to the boarding school every few weeks on a Sunday, when its grounds were quieter and she could take Tsuzuki out for a short spell. Sometimes they went shopping in the city, and she would treat him to tea and a sweet dessert at one of the modern cafes that had sprung up all over downtown like so many mushrooms after a long rain. She did it not because she had the money to spare, but because she was his older sister and had the birthright to insist on making him happy. Other times, if the weather was particularly nice, they spent their day together at the zoo, or simply walking around a park or sitting side by side on a bench in some public place, watching people go by as they caught up on one another's lives.

If Ruka was in particularly high spirits, she took him to a dance hall, and taught him to dance in the modern, Western fashion. Tsuzuki never did figure out if she had been taught herself by a friend at her place of work or some other, nameless young man; but as he stumbled diligently through a waltz or polka, he had little time to be envious of his sister's other life, or else he risked ruining what bright happiness their rare outings together brought him.

It really didn't matter to him what they did with their time together. To Tsuzuki, the thrill was merely in seeing his sister's smiling face and knowing that she was doing well for herself after their mother's passing—that she was making a way for herself in this modern world even if hers was not an extraordinary life. Ruka had never been one for adventure or glamor; that was all Tsuzuki. Just like when he was a child, she seemed content to find her happiness through his, and discover the world through his discoveries.

At least, that was what the smile on her face wanted so badly to make him believe. It was not his place to question how genuine her cheerfulness was, or whether it was hiding a private life of hardships she wished not to trouble him with, or even one of joy she feared to share with him. Tsuzuki had only to accept it, and realize that those wide, dark eyes he had once thought so full of sorrow had not been made only for mourning or quiet acceptance, but for joy and wonder as well, such as those eyes had in the photograph she gave him when she first left home. Joy, gratitude, generosity and love—even if they were lying, he had only to accept what those eyes showed him as truth.

His classmates teased him good-naturedly about his dates with his sister, but that did not bother Tsuzuki as it might have once. They were probably just jealous that Ruka had eyes for only him when she came to school to collect him, and that not a word fell from her timid lips that was not directed to him. In any case, who was he to complain? Each time he was able to speak with the sister whom he loved more dearly than anyone or anything, face-to-face, was something to treasure, and could not be squandered with petty feelings of shame brought on by outsiders.

There was one summer day when he was fourteen that would forever remain clearest in Tsuzuki's memory. It was the only time he ever truly came close to reproducing in earnest that bright smile Ruka had shown the camera on the day she was photographed with that unknown male friend before the blooming cherry trees. It was on that day that he could remember enjoying himself the most with Ruka, and that was saying much.

He remembered that day so clearly as well, however, because it was the last time they ever went out together. In fact, it was the last day Tsuzuki would ever see his beloved sister.

The weather gave no premonition of such a fate, of course. It was a bright, warm day, the sky a cloudless blue with a gentle breeze carrying the song of the cicadas in the zelkova trees down every street.

Ruka was radiant. She had taken him to a fancier dance hall than usual for a treat, and though her hair may not have been done in the same contemporary style of the more fashionable young ladies present, and her dress was simpler and no doubt home-made, the ruffles on the shoulders more subdued than their company, to Tsuzuki there was not a more beautiful girl in the place.

They laughed as they twirled on the dance floor; and, perhaps owing to Tsuzuki's youth, no one interrupted them to take Ruka's hand. Under her tutelage, his dancing had improved, but never had he felt the freedom to lose himself on the floor—never had he felt that his feet and heart were in such harmony, or that he was right where he was meant to be, with Ruka's hand in his, her waist under his arm, and she smiling like the sun.

It was such a pleasant time, that Tsuzuki could hardly believe he was not dreaming when Ruka took him aside under the twilit summer sky and strings of golden, electric lanterns to say she would not be able to meet him like this much longer.

"Why not?" he demanded to know. "What's wrong? Is it because of the boys at school? Because I don't care—"

She shook her head sadly at him. "No, it has nothing to do with them."

"Your work, then? They don't approve of your spending time with me?"

"That isn't it—"

"Then _what_? Is there something wrong with me? I'm your brother, Ruka!"

He was only distantly aware that he was raising his voice when he saw the pained grimace on Ruka's face. It was only that he could not believe the words she was saying to him could be true. He could not believe that what perfection they had had was so fragile, those words were all it took to break it, and her reaction to his sudden outburst only made it worse. How was he supposed to feel? he wanted to ask her. She was the only family he had left. Did what her coworkers or these social people think of her mean more than her own brother's feelings?

She bit her lower lip, her hands tightening to fists in her lace gloves, and for once those eyes that, however full of sadness, had never shied away from him, refused to meet his gaze.

"I'm sorry, Asato," she said, and her voice sounded tiny, drowned out by the cries of the insects. "Please, I wish you wouldn't make this harder than it has to be. I only thought that it would be better if I told you now, because I didn't want you to think that I was abandoning you. But I'm not getting any younger, and you . . . You're growing up, you're becoming a fine gentleman, and you're getting too old for your only company to be your older sister—"

"Don't say that. I'll never be too old for you."

She smiled at that, and for a moment it was almost enough to make him think the whole confession had been a joke at his expense.

Until she said under her breath: "You sound like that man when you say that."

She never had to say so directly, but he knew from past experience that by "that man," she meant his father.

"Ruka—"

"We're both getting too old to rely on each other, Asato. You have your friends at school, and I have. . . ." She hesitated, but met his eyes boldly. "I have my own life to lead."

"But that doesn't mean I can't be a part of it. Does it? I thought we had something, just the two of us. Something special." Something precious, which he could never have with anyone else. Did she not see that?

"Of course we do," she said. "You're my little brother, and there isn't anyone else like you in the world. There never will be. That won't change no matter what happens. I'm not saying I don't want to see you again, Asato, or that I want to forget days like this that I got to spend together with you. I enjoyed our times like this, I really did. More than I can say. But, you see, it's because you _are_ my brother that things were bound to change eventually, and the sooner we get used to that fact, the better it will be for both of us."

The sooner _he_ got used to it, that was. Tsuzuki could see in her smile, however apologetic it may have been, how used to it she already was. Let me go, those eyes seemed to beg him, if you care about me half as much as you profess to. . . . But he just wasn't ready.

When he said nothing, she took it as a sign the matter was settled, and turned to go back inside and rejoin the other dancers.

And suddenly Tsuzuki knew he could not let her do it, or he would lose her forever. He grabbed hold of her wrist, and pulled her back to face him. Her cheek was soft and cool under his skin as he pressed his lips to it. He was taller than her now, if only by a few inches, so it was easy to do.

Easy, that was, but for the pounding of his own blood in his ears drowning out the playing of the orchestra inside. Easy but for the way Ruka stiffened in his hold, and the way her hair smelled when he breathed in telling him like nothing else could how wrong he was to kiss her, even like this, even though it felt so right, it felt like it wasn't enough. Anyone who happened to pass by them would think they were merely some ordinary young couple in love and never be the wiser, so there was no shame in holding on to Ruka like that, was there?

Maybe there wasn't, but he didn't want her to see the reddening of his cheeks anyway. Nor did he ever want to let her go. He pulled her into a tight embrace.

"Don't leave me, sister," he muttered next to her ear. "Please don't leave me all alone. I don't know what I'd do without you. I love you. Can't you see that? I love you more than anything in the world, Ruka."

Instead of returning his sentiments, however, she shuddered in his arms at those words, then struggled. Like a fish in a net she struggled, trying to free herself from his hold in any way she could.

Stunned by it, he let go.

He had not even the chance to apologize—he did not know what he had done that was even needing of an apology—before she covered her mouth with one gloved hand and ran in the direction of the street instead of the dance hall.

It was a long moment of disbelief before Tsuzuki recovered the wits to go after her, but by that time she was across the street and hailing a rickshaw driver.

"Ruka! Ruka, please come back!" he called out to her; but if she heard him she pretended not to, because she got into the seat and hastily gave the driver directions, and did not once look his way.

The street was not particularly busy at that time of the evening, even with the nightlife crowd and the automobiles of the wealthy passing slowly by; but something kept him from chasing after her, something he had merely glimpsed in her wet eyes before she ran away from him. Something he had felt in her shoulders as they trembled in his arms that had shamed him. Something that only made him realize as he was standing there on the side of the street that perhaps what he did had been wrong after all.

* * *

Several weeks later, Tsuzuki received a letter from his uncle informing him that Ruka was engaged to be married. He did not say to whom, only that a young man whom she was seeing had asked for her hand, promised to do right by her, and won her uncle's approval. Tsuzuki was left to wonder if it was the same young man who had been ripped from the photograph Ruka gave him years ago—the young man whose face he had never known, so had had no choice but to superimpose his own onto in his imagination.

He waited to receive more word on the matter, or an invitation to the wedding, but no letters came after that. From Ruka or their uncle. If she had married her beau, or if the engagement had fallen through, he never knew. He never got to see his older sister in their mother's old wedding kimono. Somehow even his imagination would not allow him to picture her in those white gowns and the bonnet and makeup that made any young woman look mature beyond her years and resigned to her fate.

To his mind it would have been the same as imagining her dead. He simply could not do it. He could not bear to think, even in his subconscious mind, that he had lost his sister—the last family he had left. Because that was what it amounted to.

And for that, he should never have kissed her. It was only after his rash reaction to her perfectly reasonable words that she had disappeared exactly as he feared she would, and it was only after that that he had received this letter about a marriage. Was it possible that she had rushed into the decision because of his behavior? That he had inadvertently pushed her into it because of the feelings he had confessed to her? If it were possible to undo what happened that summer evening, would he still see her walking down the school yard path this Sunday, come to take him to see the Tanibata fireworks? To light a lantern for their mother on the river at Obon?

He could punish himself for all that could have been—and that he did—but none of it would bring Ruka back to him. That was the truth that stood before Tsuzuki, waiting for him to accept it; but each time he told himself to stop living in the past, to do the mature and logical thing and let his sister go—they would see each other again eventually, they were family, they had to—a tiny force deep inside suddenly leaped forth and kept him hanging on to his memories a while longer. After all, Ruka always had been his strength. If he simply accepted what his uncle told him without any hope whatsoever, would that not be the same as giving up his faith in her—the same as giving up faith in her love for him, however different the nature of that love might have been from his? What would she think of him if she knew he had done that? Wouldn't she feel betrayed?

At times like those, Tsuzuki steeled his heart and reached for the photograph he kept of her—the one she had given him after ripping its other subject from the frame—now wrinkled by all the places he had hidden it away when he swore to never look at it again, and all the times he had hurried to pull it out just so he might be reminded that she existed. So that he might be reminded of what she looked like, and her wide, sorrowful eyes. . . .

That photograph became his secret shame. While other boys collected photographs of their sweethearts from back home or the entertainers they fancied at the moment, the young woman Tsuzuki cherished more than any other was his older sister—six years his senior and whom he had not seen in an increasing number of months, then years. It was her beautiful face he dreamed of, and her arms he wanted to lose himself in when loneliness and hardship set in the worst. Truly there could be nothing sinful in wanting that much. After all, were they not taught in school that it was a brother and sister whose love for one another had created the Japanese islands? Still, myth was a matter unto itself; and he dared not imagine what his peers would think if they found out about the photograph, though he assured himself that his thoughts about Ruka were pure—or, at least, purer than their thoughts about the subjects of their photographs—even if the fact did remain: he longed for her so much sometimes it felt as though his whole body, no, his whole being ached.

The only thing worse than missing her was the way in which he had betrayed her. That he wanted no one to ever discover. He would have wiped the whole incident from the universe's memory had he the power to do so.

The more time passed, the less Tsuzuki was even sure how it happened the way it did. Surely there was some key piece he was missing, something that he said or that had been in his eyes to upset her, because surely a mere kiss—and a chaste one at that—could not be powerful enough to make Ruka disappear, or make her never want to write to or visit him again. He began to fear he would never have another chance to ask her what had driven her away, or apologize for everything he had done. He did not even know where she worked, and he doubted very much he could trust his uncle and his wife to get a letter to Ruka for him.

Still, he had promised her once that he would make it all up to her and their mother one day, when he was through with college and had a respectable, well-paying job. That promise was little consolation to Tsuzuki those weeks during the height of his adolescence when Ruka's absence from his life was the hardest to bear; but it was enough of a reason to go on, this fragile bit of hope that one day Ruka might fall back into his life, and on that day he would be able to prove to her once and for all how much he loved her, and how sorry he was for all she had been made to suffer on his account. Maybe one day yet, he would still be able to make her happy.

In the meantime, he continued to visit those dance halls where she had taken him and waltzed with him once. He never saw her at any one of them—and that did not surprise him—but he allowed himself the impossible fantasy that maybe one day she would appear at the doors, as brilliant in her ball gown as that last afternoon, and everything that had come to stand between them would be torn down and forgotten. The last few months, or years, would melt away, and things would be like they always were between them, if not better.

He vowed to be ready for her whenever that day came.

* * *

"Tsuzuki! Here you are!"

He looked up just in time to see a young woman in a pale, peach dress bouncing toward him, before she hooked an arm around his, grabbed it tight in the other, and was dragging him to another part of the hall with the excuse, "There's some people you just have to meet."

She introduced him to a couple of the university's juniors, two young men with drinks in hand and not a wrinkle in their formal suits whom half the ball's attendees were greeting as they came in as lords, if only in jest. This young woman on his arm was one of the exceptions, but her smile was especially bright and her gestures especially enthusiastic as she said to them, "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you Mr Tsuzuki Asato, the best ballroom dancer in the country."

He shook the hands offered him, even if eyebrows went up in incredulity. One of the young men, Iwase, said, "Is that so?"

Which made Tsuzuki blush. "I wouldn't say that, Motoko—"

"Oh, don't be modest," the girl called Motoko said with a wave. "You boys have some stiff competition, so it's only right you take him under your wing, you hear?"

"Aye-aye," the other, Yoshikawa, saluted her. "You brought him to the right place. We aren't called the Yaji and Kita of Messiah College for nothing—"

"Sure," Motoko teased, "they couldn't find two bigger buffoons to fit the bill."

It was the Christian Messiah College that Tsuzuki had chosen for his higher education when he finished high school. There was a movement underway in Japan's cities, led by foreign and homegrown preachers both who had found a following with the younger generations born in the Meiji era, coming of age in the Taisho, to whom their spirited, pentecostal methods and message of forgiveness and love held great appeal. Tsuzuki could not deny that he admired those who exhibited such fervor in their belief, but he had other reasons for choosing the school.

He lacked the grades and the social status that would have helped him enter a public university, but that school was happy enough to take his money whether he professed to share the Christian faith or not. With any luck, the administration no doubt felt, that would change once he had lived and studied for a time in their hospitable and pious atmosphere: eventually, through the examples of his peers and professors, he would come to see the peace and salvation offered by an acceptance of Jesus Christ for himself.

It was not as though Tsuzuki had a faith to call his own already. And the stories he heard in the masses he was required to attend did resonate with him, even if he could not be sure he got the meaning out of them he was supposed to. It wasn't in the singing of hymns or in the sign of the cross, or in the homilies that constantly appealed to the community's financial charity. Rather, he was drawn to the miracle stories and the Christ's compassionate words, as they seemed to him to echo what he had always felt in his heart but could never find the right words to explain. Like what his doctor friend had preached to him in his rose garden, about the kind of man he wanted to be as a physician: comforting others and healing their ails. If that was all it took to be a Christian, then Tsuzuki felt like he was one already, however much the university's staff was fond of reminding him otherwise.

If the school portrayed itself as a place of academic piety, however, some of its most prominent students—Tsuzuki quickly learned—were about as far removed from monks as one could be. Yoshikawa had a reputation among the other students as something of a rogue, Iwase as a flaming socialist, and both were quick to congratulate Tsuzuki when he caught the attention of yet another young attendee of the fairer sex he knew from his dance hall days; but somehow none of these qualities detracted from their status as exemplary models for respectable Christian values for the incoming freshmen.

"Like shepherds to the spring lambs," Yoshikawa joked as he put a flute of champagne in Tsuzuki's hand.

As if to illustrate, when Iwase joined them again he was herding a rather timid-looking freshman under one arm, who was dressed more for the road than the formal ocassion. "Brothers," he said to them, "I want you all to meet K, who—believe it or not—just got into town this past hour. How's that for timing?"

"Don't you think you're cutting it close?" said Yoshikawa.

"The train I was supposed to take up from the country encountered some delays, that's why I'm so late getting settled in," said the newcomer. "The rest of my luggage isn't expected to arrive until tomorrow yet."

"Ah, then you can stay with me if you need a place to put yourself up for a couple nights, and rent a futon in the meantime."

"Thank you, Sempai. That's rather generous." For someone who had all but professed himself a country bumpkin, the young man who called himself K spoke with a refined restraint that was, among present company, refreshingly urbane and modest. "I appreciate your looking out for me," he went on, "but it looks like I'll be staying in a room with . . . one moment, let me see. . . ." The young man fished a folded piece of paper from his pocket and read: "A Mr Tsuzuki Asato—"

Their companions laughed; but not before Tsuzuki jumped, nearly spilling his drink over all of them, to exclaim, "That's me!"

He wasn't sure, but the look that automatically crossed the other's face before he squelched it seemed to be one of horror.

Then he blinked, put the card away, and extended a hand. "Well, then, Mr Tsuzuki, please treat me well. I am in your care."

Tsuzuki, of course, was quick to wave off his formality, even as he vigorously shook that hand. After all, he said, they were newcomers to the school together, no matter which of them arrived first. Inside, however, he could not but admit that he felt humbled by this young man.

Perhaps it was ironic given his own most prominent feature, but even while as decades went by Tsuzuki would quickly forget his face, what struck him most about K at their first meeting were his eyes, which for a young man of university age were wide and deep, and always brutally honest—even when K turned them away at their upperclassmen's jesting and tried not to betray his veneer of seriousness with a smile. Perhaps in that way, he reminded Tsuzuki a bit of someone else, someone who had been dear to him long ago. Perhaps it was because of that that he put forth the effort with K that he did.

Whichever the case, he knew instantly that he could always trust those eyes to tell him the truth, and because of it he yearned to pull K out of his shell, to see what new jealously guarded layer of the young man's identity would be revealed there at each turn.

As though he were aware of that desire—and of their upperclassmen's uncannily strong propensity to cause a distraction—K kept his nose stubbornly to his studies almost day in and out; yet Tsuzuki was glad to notice that his roommate appeared to be as uncomfortable in mass as he was, even refraining from singing the hymns, either because he did not know them or was too shy to raise his voice. Tsuzuki knew his own wasn't anything to be proud of, but his gentle nudging only seemed to make K retreat further inside himself.

Which was puzzling to him. Tsuzuki was used to his charisma having the opposite effect—cajoling others into taking the chances they might otherwise hesitate to take—so as a result, K seemed to him a singular and enigmatic person indeed. But, as was simply his nature, Tsuzuki would not allow himself to rest until he had discovered what it was that made this young man the way he was.

* * *

"Come on, Tsuzuki—is that the best you can do? My grandmother could drive faster than this."

"I hope those words taste good, 'cause you know I'm gonna make you eat 'em."

"That right?"

Tsuzuki just laughed at the challenge and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The car responded by tilting dangerously on its axles, and making his friends grab hold of whatever part of the car was closest as they were thrown to the left side of the vehicle, the one who had issued the challenge gripping his hat in his free hand before it could fly away from him. For a moment even Tsuzuki feared the front wheel was going to come off the road; but the motorcar evened itself out again and he stepped on the gas, sending them soaring forward on the dirt road to a chorus of relieved whoops and hollers.

K's voice alone cut crystal clear through the wind: "Tsuzuki, you jackass!"

A brief glance over his shoulder was all Tsuzuki could spare, but it was long enough to see the young man holding on for dear life in the back seat. Somehow even then, he thought he caught a glimmer of excitement in K's voice as well, a nervous twitter of laughter as he added, "You trying to kill us _and_ the motorcar?"

Yoshikawa laughed aloud. "Nah, just us, I'm afraid. 'Cause if he hurts this car, we're all dead anyway."

Somehow, though, even he didn't seem too worried, despite the car being on loan for the day from his uncle. It might have been more out of envy that he teased Tsuzuki, because when his own turn came to drive, he was unable to let loose like his younger friend, though he was sure to use a concern for others' property as an excuse for his conservative driving. He had much more practice at the wheel as well, and by the time he was back behind it, some of the adrenaline raised by Tsuzuki's driving had worked its way out of the foursome's systems.

Once in the backseat with K, Tsuzuki leaned back and enjoyed the feel of the wind through his hair, the sunlight beating warm against his closed eyelids when they passed out of the shadows of trees. They were still soaring down the dirt path at what most would consider a breakneck speed, but their upperclassmen handled the bumps and turns in the road with such seeming effortlessness that neither could bring himself to remain on edge.

Tsuzuki turned his head to glance at K, who was facing the other way, watching the suburban landscape pass them by. His friend sat straighter in the seat, his straw boater held firmly on his lap and the wind hardly ruffing his slicked hair or the lapels of his buttoned summer suit. Why he agreed to come out with them when he seemed to be enjoying himself so little was a mystery to Tsuzuki; until K happened to turn his way and, catching Tsuzuki staring at him, smiled in return. K's lips barely moved, but his dark eyes scrunched up, and it was not just from the sun. No longer did Tsuzuki care about his motives—nor his happiness, if he were honest. It was enough to have that gentle, contemplative smile given to him alone; and with the rumble of the engine and the vibration of the road passing swiftly beneath them, it made his heart soar in his chest as though he were a dragonfly humming along above the motorcar, riding its wake.

The four of them had skipped Sunday mass to come out here for a drive outside the city. It was the perfect day for it: the sky was a pearly blue, the May air heavy and warm as though in preview of the summer rains. Only when they were driving could they rustle up a cooling wind. There was a small lake on their way back into town where they stopped to while away the afternoon. Children floated toy boats on the water's edge, and modern girls with ankles gleefully exposed sat fanning themselves under the shade of the trees. Yoshikawa and Iwase joked in low voices and whistled popular tunes now and then, trying to catch their attention, but never garnering anything more than a suspicious glance. Tiring of that, they loosened their collars, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and improvised a game of baseball, cajoling Tsuzuki to join them and trusting their shed jackets to K, who could not be moved from his spot at the foot of a cherry tree even for wont of trying.

He watched them for a short while, eventually pulling out a small book and pen. Whenever Tsuzuki glanced over at him, he looked like he was asleep under the brim of his boater, but for the infrequent, lazy turn of a page.

When Tsuzuki could stand it no longer, he excused himself from his friends and, with two bottles of soda procured from a nearby vendor, returned to K's side.

It was a moment before his friend noticed he was standing there and looked up, and when he did his gaze went from the proffered soda bottle to Tsuzuki. "You know I don't like sweet things."

"I know," Tsuzuki said. "But you must be feeling the heat over here, even if you are just sitting still."

K did not refute that. He smiled bashfully and took the bottle with a small, "Thanks." He was in shirtsleeves himself and the side of his neck glistened even under the shade of his hat and the cherry's wide leaves, so he was not shy about taking a generous swig of soda.

Tsuzuki settled down on the grass, stretching out on his side beside him. "So. What are you reading that you can't be bothered for a game of ball, on this your Sunday off?"

"English poetry. Milton, to be exact." K glanced at him. "Are you familiar with him?"

"The only English I know is Sherlock Holmes," Tsuzuki teased him with a bashful grin. K smiled but did not laugh. "Why're you studying on a day like this?"

"It's not for class. This is one of the great classics of modern English literature. You know, Soseki was a student of the English poets," K said with more conviction to Tsuzuki's skeptical hum.

"Yeah, and look how depressing his stories were."

K glared. "You have no idea, do you? Here:

"'Freely they stood who stood,'" he quoted softly, whether Tsuzuki wanted to hear or not— "'and fell who fell.

"Not free, what proof could they have given sincere  
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love,  
Where only what they needs must do, appear'd;  
Not what they would? What praise could they receive?  
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,  
When will and reason (reason also is choice)  
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,  
Made passive both, had serv'd necessity,  
Not me?. . ."

The lines had been translated, but even though the language was Japanese, the structure was old enough Tsuzuki wasn't sure he understood them at first hearing. But something in the passage spoke to him anyway; even if he could not explain what it meant if his life depended on it, even if he could not pinpoint its exact source in any one phrase, he felt the anguish in that passage nonetheless.

At the same time, his stubborn smile and the blue of the sky sparkling through the tree's leaves would not allow it to sink in, as though he had experienced a revelation and forgotten it completely at the same time.

"That's beautiful," he said. "Now, what does it mean?"

K sighed as though in impatience, but Tsuzuki could see that it had little if anything to do with Tsuzuki's question.

"I think what it means is that faith which is given without free will—that's given out of fear, or blind devotion, or is demanded of tyranny—means nothing. What's important is not that that kind of faith isn't deserved, but that the one who gives it is able to persevere through everything that stands in his way, everything that tells him to give up, in order to love something that, for all he knows, might not even care, simply because it's right.

"But more than that, what I think it means is that we have no one to blame for what becomes of us but ourselves and our own actions. 'The mind is its own place,' Milton writes before that, 'and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'"

The smile did not leave Tsuzuki even as K's meaning sank in, but now he truly felt its fragility. It felt as though K had spoken to his very soul, and unwittingly at that. Unaware that he had been staring himself, the words slipped from Tsuzuki's lips before he could think about what he was saying: "See? That's why you make a much better student than I ever will."

K started and lowered his head. "I wouldn't say that. Not at all."

Those words came like a warning—careful, Tsuzuki, you don't know about that which you speak—and he took it to heart, chiding his friend instead that their conversation was turning much too dark for that sort of day.

"Well, then, how do you propose we spend it? Other than playing baseball, that is."

"I don't know. I used to spend days like this trying to catch tadpoles in the lake—"

K laughed at him for that, and Tsuzuki glared back. But his friend could not be pressed for an explanation when Tsuzuki wanted to know what about what he'd said was so amusing.

"Come on," he said suddenly, jumping back to his feet. "Let's take a walk."

K sobered. "What about Iwase-sempai and—"

"They can look after themselves."

Besides, he wanted to be somewhere alone with K, away from the eyes of the Sunday crowd. He couldn't really explain the sudden urge himself. It was not as though they didn't spend enough time alone in their shared room, with their respective studies, but there was something about the two of them being surrounded by nature that brought something out of K the university dormitory could not, like that elusive garden of Eden.

And perhaps that—Tsuzuki thought, as he paid K back by excitedly pointing out the various birds that populated the park by their calls—was precisely the key to unlocking his friend's true nature that he had been searching for. Nor was he about to give it up once so newly found.

* * *

It seemed to Tsuzuki that some of his worst memories were made during the summer. It was during its rains that his mother had passed away—as well as B, heralding the abuse by his schoolmates that seemed to dominate the memories he still fought to bury of that part of his life.

But it was also the season in which he had made the most wonderful discoveries. Summer was when, as a child, he had watched the cicadas emerge from their old exoskeletons, growing before his eyes on the tree trunks they clung to as they dried their wings in the shade and sang the song of their birth. He met Dr H in the summer, when his roses were in their most glorious period of bloom. And it was during that time six years before when he had been struck with the realization of just how precious Ruka's beauty was to him, and the tumult of longing and melancholy that his heretofore pure love had been thrown into, like the thick August air, made him dizzy.

The summer of 1918 promised to be no different.

Whether it was driving lessons in the country or weekend trips to the beach, or simply relaxing in the shade of their dorm rooms, trying in vain to beat back the muggy air with paper fans, Tsuzuki felt himself intoxicated by the freedom of university life. And by youth, and the simple pleasures that were allowed a young man and his friends in this new era had they simply some looks and some money. Some charm and a little sense of worldliness didn't hurt matters any, either. It came at just a small pittance, an hour every Sunday at church services, followed by a half hour of paying his dues to the nice Christian ladies who smiled at him over their homemade cakes and tea, and whose attentions he and his classmates would tease one another about later.

That summer, at the sudden advent of its heat in the first days of June, a noh stage was set up in the park and the students skipped classes to go down and see the full day's sequence of plays. An auspicious performance about a goddess started them off, followed by some histories; but it was the evening's last couple of plays that Tsuzuki and K looked forward to the most as they sat together in the cheap seats. The ending play, dubbed the demon play, was always the most interesting, with the action and drama sufficient to capture a university student's imagination, and short attention span.

However, Tsuzuki could not help noticing with some disappointment how the demons whom these plays concerned never attained enlightenment like those ghosts of men and women who appeared in the performances before them. Their stories ended without resolution, with the demons merely retreating, momentarily defeated, to rest for a few centuries before some new band of monks would be required to placate their renewed ire. Surely as time went on, so did that mode of existence grow increasingly unbearable, being shunned and subdued era after era without even the small grace of being allowed to die and be reborn. Given that, could anyone really blame the demons for the destruction they caused?

The drums and cries of the orchestra, the shrill anti-melody of the flute, accentuated its pain as the lead actor performed a terrifyingly graceful dance about the stage.

But not before K could whisper in Tsuzuki's ear, "Do you know why they always use a pine tree for the background?"

He was not the type to interrupt a live performance of any kind, so just hearing his voice was enough to break Tsuzuki out of the trance he had been lulled into and turn his gaze to the painted wood carving of a pine tree that stood behind the orchestra. The gold leaf on its trunk shimmered in the flickering torchlight—or in the smile that was apparent in K's low voice at his ear; he could not be sure which. Only that its irony struck him as insensitive to the demon's plight at first; and then the warmth of his friend's breath on his neck distracted him from even that.

"Because," K said when he was silent, his voice dropping even lower and more intimate, "it's always in season. The pine tree never changes, but is always faithful."

That one word rang out in Tsuzuki's mind over the actor's voice: faithful. Despite the warmth of the evening, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Surely, he thought, the intimacy he imagined in his friend's voice was unintentional—a coincidence, or a side effect of his efforts not to interrupt anyone else's experience. The two of them had grown increasingly closer, but surely it was wrong to think this was a sign that K returned his affection—an affection Tsuzuki himself did not even know how to describe or catalog.

He refrained from leaning in toward his friend in kind. Whatever K's motive had been in giving him that bit of information, and no matter how easy it would be to slip a hand between them to rest on an elbow, now was not the time, nor were they in the place for Tsuzuki to respond in such a way that might jeopardize the camaraderie they shared, even if they were the only two who would notice. Even if only to acknowledge K's words—words which he only seemed to feel free to utter under the cover of night. That pine tree may have been faithful, but its existence was no doubt a fragile one, perched on the edge of some cliff or mountain where winds had twisted it into its tortured shape. It had survived so much, but, like the proverbial straw on the camel's back, who knew how little might be required to destroy it.

There were those muggy afternoons, close quarters made even closer with the shades drawn and fat raindrops drumming on the roof, they would pass the time discussing the social lives of their dormmates, when it seemed in hindsight to be inevitable that the conversation would eventually turn to themselves. In truth, neither of them particularly cared about whom whoever was seeing at the moment; but they found themselves discussing it nonetheless, repeating hearsay passed along by the likes of Iwase or Yoshikawa, as though in doing so they might banish that particular responsibility of young, modern men from their own blissfully uncomplicated lives.

So-and-so's parents were trying to match him with the daughter of an old samurai family, and So-and-so couldn't stop rubbing it in like she would make the perfect wife, even though everyone knew she was somewhat lacking in domesticity. They could hardly imagine themselves married at their age, though supposed it was a sign of the times that no one cared they weren't tied down, or at least betrothed, already. These days it was almost expected of a young man—or even a young lady—to shop around before committing, like Such-and-such, who was spending his good time and money seeing some _moga_ —a modern girl—who was a Christian to boot. Word had it she kissed like one, too. "If you'll pardon the pun."

"What do you mean?"

"'Oh then dear saint, let lips do as hands do'?"

K merely stared at him blankly.

" _Romeo and Juliet_? Come on, I thought you were the big English poetry enthusiast." Tsuzuki looked at him incredulously, but there was a certain facetiousness to his smile. And it was not because his friend had missed the reference, either.

"Usually something has to make sense first for it to be called a pun," K said, "and two, show clever usage and _understanding_ of the language."

"Or maybe," Tsuzuki teased, "you're just sore because you've never kissed a girl."

K's smile dropped; and Tsuzuki had to admit, it was not as though his comment were called for. "And I'm sure you would be the expert on that subject."

"Well, I do have plenty of experience." It might not have been the exact truth—he never said whom with or where, or how seriously—but then, truth was not Tsuzuki's original intention.

But instead of firing back with some witty comment, or calling Tsuzuki's bluff, like any of their other classmates might have done, K simply lowered his eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Tsuzuki said, laughing, and gave K, who was sitting on the floor with his books, a shove. He had not been paying attention, however, and lost balance, falling onto his back with Tsuzuki above him teasing him with his bright smile. "Someone with your looks? There must be dozens of girls in this city who'd fall for you in a heartbeat, what with those big eyes of yours, if you just turned on the charm. But then, you've probably never even noticed how they stare, have you, Mr Oblivious?"

"You wouldn't know—"

"Do you even know how to go about it?"

When K blushed, Tsuzuki backtracked: "Look, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have given you such a hard time if I had thought it would bother you so much. It's not that big a deal, you know. Honestly. I can even show you, if you like, just to prove it."

K swallowed visibly at that, but he suppressed whatever fear may have been in him the next moment as he pushed himself up, leaning back on his hands under Tsuzuki's suddenly challenging stare. The quiet "What, now?" slipped out before either seemed to have realized what he had said.

Tsuzuki shrugged carelessly, but his smile wavered. "Sure. If that's what you want."

If he were honest, though, he didn't really care whether that was what K wanted or not. In the back of his mind he knew it was probably stupid, but he had something to prove—or disprove, either to himself or K; he couldn't be sure which—and the awkwardness of their positions was not enough to stop Tsuzuki from leaning in toward his friend. He deliberated over what to do before finally placing a hand on the nape of K's neck. "You have to be still, all right?" he murmured, shifting himself closer. Wetting his lip with his tongue in nervous preparation before realizing that might not have been the most considerate thing to do.

K, who was determined to be scientific, did as told. "All right."

"Tilt your head a little . . . like this." The words sounded strange to Tsuzuki's ears as he guided K where he wanted him, and felt even stranger in his mouth, like they were coming from someone else, or as if someone else had taken over his body. It was all just stalling, until he could work up his nerve to finish what he had recklessly started, but it made him more nervous than not. He said more for his own sake than K's: "You can close your eyes if it makes it easier."

But K's remained wide open. They only fluttered a bit and lowered when Tsuzuki finally leaned in, and softly touched their lips together.

His friend froze under the kiss, but only momentarily, and he did not pull away as Tsuzuki half feared, half hoped he might. It was an alien sensation to him, like kissing Ruka's cheek—and not because it felt wrong. It was simply different from all those kisses he had lain on the backs of young ladies' hands at one function or another, different too from the pecks they had stolen when he wasn't prepared. Rather, it reached down into the pit of him, down into who he was—a sensation which was frightening and exhilarating at the same time, and made it all the more jarring when he felt K's fingers tentatively grace the side of his face.

He's only doing it to make a fool of me, Tsuzuki told himself instinctively; he doesn't mean anything more by it than if this were a lab exercise. But even as that thought wormed itself into his mind, his lips tingled and his limbs felt warm like they only did when he had too much to drink.

It was at recognizing that that Tsuzuki pulled himself away.

"You'll have to learn to loosen up if you ever hope to get anywhere," he said in the same teasing tone of voice as before; but it felt like the only one he was kidding was himself.

"I'm sorry. I suppose I'll improve with practice," K said with equal sarcasm, turning back to his studies.

And Tsuzuki followed it through with what was perhaps an unnecessarily cruel, "You do realize that means you need to make an actual effort," grinning as he pushed himself off the floor and to his feet.

He was too distracted by how the soft and silent pressure of his friend's lips against his had felt and how best not to show it to concentrate on his own studies, however. And he certainly had too much on his mind to notice that, despite the weather, K was trembling.

* * *

The timing was too good for Tsuzuki not to suspect that what happened in their room that afternoon was not at least partially to blame for K's melancholy in the weeks to follow. He began to fear that he had overstepped the invisible boundary laid between them; but he could not apologize for doing so without reminding K of it again. No matter how much he now regretted the consequences of his actions, he could not bring himself to do that much. Even if only to explain his pure intentions. It seemed now that what he had taken for a deeper bond between them might have been little more than his wishful thinking from the beginning, little more than the yearning every individual has in his heart to find another who truly understands his soul; and perhaps out of fear of being confronted with reality, Tsuzuki was especially careful now about what he said to K, lest his one close friend abandon him as had so many others.

He only found out he need not have worried when K asked if Tsuzuki would join him on summer holiday in his hometown.

"That is," he added when he caught the surprise on Tsuzuki's face, "if you didn't already have plans—"

"No, not at all." There was no need for him to explain he didn't have any family to visit himself; K already knew that much. "I mean, I would love to see the town where you grew up. It's been too long since I've seen the countryside at all. But you're sure I won't be a nuisance?"

"On the contrary," K said, to his amazement. "My family would like to meet you. I've told them all about how you've looked after me these past months, and I think they'd like to thank you for it in person. I'm sorry, but it seems I'm putting you in something of a spot by saying that, aren't I?"

"Not at all," Tsuzuki assured him once again.

He was relieved to think now that K's dark mood must have been the result of homesickness rather than anxiety about their friendship, and he felt he would be a fool to decline the offer. It was in K's character not to outwardly show his pleasure or displeasure much at all, but as the train they took to his hometown drew gradually closer to its destination, his smile grew in tandem. With every landmark they passed that was familiar to him, his eyes sparkled in a way that Tsuzuki found irresistible.

In linen summer suits and ties, their hair slicked back and shoes freshly polished, they sat across from each other with the window open to the breeze, talking and laughing about nothing important and simply enjoying one another's company. In Tsuzuki's humble opinion, there could not have been another two people on the train that day who were having as much fun as they were. It was a side to K he had never seen before, one that K seemed loath to show their mutual friends, but Tsuzuki found himself only falling more for his character because of it.

When the train pulled into the small country station, their time alone together came to an end when a young woman in kimono spotted them and waved, calling K's name.

"Your mother told me you were coming in today, so she sent me to greet you in her place," the young woman said when she had joined them. She turned her bright smile to Tsuzuki. "She said you were bringing a friend along with you. Is this him?"

"Ah. . . ." K looked down at the platform in sudden shyness. "This is Tsuzuki, my good friend from university. Tsuzuki, my cousin—"

"You can call me Ayame."

If K was taken aback by her forwardness toward Tsuzuki at all, he did not show it. "A pleasure, Miss Ayame," Tsuzuki said when it seemed it would be all right to do so, and bowed his head with a hand to his breast.

His manner took the young woman somewhat aback, and she blushed; but it was K's gaze she appeared awkward to meet when she offered—to his quick refusal—to help him with his luggage. As Tsuzuki followed behind them down the dusty road, listening to Ayame press K for details about the city, he was left with an impression that the relationship between the two could not be so easily summed up as one of extended family; but he did not press his friend on the matter, seeing as it was K's business and none of his.

Tsuzuki had no time to dwell on the matter in any case when they arrived at their destination. K's family's home was a large one, and Tsuzuki could not be sure why that surprised him. It would make sense for them to have some money if they were able to send their son to a private university, but K had never acted with the same superfluous air of some of their other wealthy schoolmates; in fact, at times he had seemed to Tsuzuki as humble and poor of spirit as Christ himself.

It was clear now where he got it. His mother and two younger sisters were most accepting of Tsuzuki, expressing their excitement to meet him after K's glowing letters, nor were they disappointed; and his father, though nearly as reserved as K, was quick to give him a pat on the back in gratitude for Tsuzuki's looking out for his son, making certain his sake cup at dinner was never empty. Tsuzuki was not used to such hospitality, but somehow he remembered his manners, even when they complimented him on them and remarked with fondness how he reminded them of one of K's older brothers, who had left some years before to go on a mission to Korea. Not once did anyone mention his unusual eyes, though he noticed the youngest girl staring at him across her dinner—and felt Ayame's curious gaze on him every now and then as well.

Then again, K turned to him just as often, sometimes a lopsided smile on his lips in embarrassment for something his mother said, but mostly with pride for the young man he was able to call his good friend.

They laughed about it that night when the household had gone to bed, when they lay in their futons laid out beside one another in the room K had shared years ago with his brothers. K teased him for drinking like a fish that night, and Tsuzuki grumbled in jest that maybe he would not have if K's father hadn't kept refilling his cup. "I couldn't very well refuse. That would be rude."

"Then don't complain to me if you're hungover in the morning, idiot."

He said so in jest, but maybe there was some truth to it, as Tsuzuki was unable to find a sufficient retort. Nor was it particularly easy to rustle up his usual wit with the crickets making their ruckus under the floorboards and his head feeling buoyant as a cloud, drifting where it would and unable to settle down on any one concrete thought.

"What about your family, Tsuzuki?"

K cocked his head as he said it, an uncharacteristically laid-back look to him as he lay propped up on one elbow, the coverlet nudged aside from the heat and the fan temporarily still at his side. "I mean, I know from what you've told me that they're no longer around," he said when he remembered his place, "but you've never told me what they were like. I've always wondered where you got that sense of humor of yours, that . . . good-naturedness that seems to follow you around everywhere like you had the sun on your shoulders."

"It's always been a mystery to me, too," Tsuzuki said with a chuckle; but he indulged his friend nonetheless, while K listened rapt and without judgment, nodding occasionally in silence.

Surprisingly, it was easy to talk about his mother and Ruka once Tsuzuki got started. He had thought for so many years that to speak of them would only bring him pain, or else would be too private to entrust to another living soul, so he had kept that part of himself under careful lock and key in fear of that pain; but the reality felt so different. If any part of it were painful, it was only the realization that he missed them, and that he was powerless to change that; but having K hear as much was better than keeping it to himself, like a balm to an ache he had too long learned to ignore.

He even told K about his father—if only repeating the stories his mother told him as a child—whom he had never discussed with anyone since he was a small boy too curious yet to care what others thought of him. He left out the guilt he still felt sometimes about his mother's death, and how he had estranged Ruka from himself; but about the rest, he found himself speaking with a candor that surprised even himself, but that he could not regret when he glanced over and saw the understanding in K's eyes.

When at last Tsuzuki trailed off, feeling suddenly exhausted, and the cries of the crickets filled the space between them, K let out a breath as though he had been holding it that whole time.

"What?" Tsuzuki asked him, unable to help his rising discomfort. "Don't you have anything to say?"

"'Under your guidance, whatever remains of our ancient wickedness, once done away with, shall free the earth from its incessant fear.'"

Tsuzuki was not sure what he had expected of his friend—judgment, perhaps, for one—but that was certainly not it. "Is that more of your English poets?" he slurred.

"Latin. Virgil." K looked down with a sudden bashfulness, as though this past hour he had been the one laying open his soul instead of Tsuzuki. "It's what my brother would tell me in times of doubt, as if to assure me, _this hardship too shall pass_. I think he was talking about a savior, but lying here listening to you speak tonight, I wonder if it might be more personal than that."

But K had it backwards, Tsuzuki thought.

Tsuzuki had done nothing but talk. Rather, it was as though K could peer into his soul, and see the memories of Ruka and of the Tokyo doctor that resided there—the memories of those who had calmed the darkness that resided deep inside him, whenever it raised its head from its fitful slumber. It had been so long since he had a voice like that to guide him through his darkness, like a faithful shepherd, that he failed to notice the difference anymore.

Until now. Until he felt that incessant something, that ancient something, quelled by the blue sky and clean air of the country, and by K's words, which fell upon him again like a gentle caress.

"What is it about you, Tsuzuki," K asked him in a whisper on the edge of his fading consciousness, "that makes me feel like I'm somebody else—somebody better?"

* * *

They spent those long summer days strolling the surrounding area, aimlessly following the paths that wound out through the rice fields, along the raised edges of irrigation ditches and down to the river, or up into the wooded hills with their half-forgotten shrines and moss-covered old mileposts, absently kicking stones down the dirt path and getting dust on their good leather shoes, talking endlessly about whichever subjects sprang to mind, or else simply enjoying one another's presence in close, sacred silence.

It seemed some days as though they spent every minute together; and what few were not spent in K's company, it was his younger sisters who occupied Tsuzuki's time, or else Ayame, whose appearances at the house seemed to be becoming more and more frequent. Tsuzuki was quick to joke about it on one of their long walks, saying it must have been that she missed K so much she was doing everything in her power to maximize the time they were together before he went back to the city. "It's refreshing to see cousins so close like that."

"Who, Ayame? Oh. . . ." K looked down at his feet. "I should have been more specific before. We're only cousins by marriage. She and I are supposed to be betrothed, actually."

"Supposed to be? You don't sound very enthusiastic about it."

Tsuzuki laughed lightly, but by the look on his friend's face, it had not been the best course of action. When he thought about it, there must have been a good reason K hadn't mentioned it before. "It isn't that. It's just . . . Well, it was arranged when we were just young kids, and things have changed since those days. We've both . . ."

He looked up, but quickly looked away again when he caught Tsuzuki's eye.

"We've both grown up quite a bit since then."

Well, that was a given, Tsuzuki wanted to say. It seemed from his friend's tone of voice that there was more to it than that, but he held his tongue and was content to let the matter drop when K changed the subject to something more trivial.

It did put his friend's behavior that night when Ayame once again joined them for dinner into a new perspective, even if he could not quite grasp what that perspective was supposed to be. When he was awakened during the night it was with the feeling that K was wide awake beside him, though Tsuzuki could not be certain this was the case with his friend facing the other way and breathing regularly. It was only a feeling he had, and he repressed the instinctive urge to reach out and ask K the matter. Perhaps, on a level he was not entirely aware of, he knew it was best to simply leave these things be.

Perhaps, too, K's restlessness had something to do with the village's summer festival, which was only days away, and which had dominated Ayame's talk that night at dinner. Tsuzuki looked forward to it with a childlike anticipation, as he had not been to a summer festival in the country in almost a decade. And besides, what he did remember of his own town's festivals was clouded by the hostility of his childhood peers, which had not allowed him to let his guard down enough to enjoy himself properly.

But for whatever reason, and in a way Tsuzuki could not quite explain, it felt as though the air between himself and K was fast turning as chilly as it had been leading up to their holiday, if not even colder. When he would casually ask K whether there was a problem, however, his friend responded as if he had no idea why there should be.

Yet Tsuzuki doubted K could really be so oblivious to his own behavior. At school, he was conscious of himself almost to a fault, and would never have chastised the older of his sisters for the questions she asked innocently of Tsuzuki, let alone allowed himself to stare so openly as he now did across the table, or the space between their futons at night when he could not get to sleep. Perhaps it was the looming return to university that weighed on K's mind, Tsuzuki told himself, and that would not allow him to enjoy what little time they had left there while they still had it. "You're going to get ulcers if you keep worrying like this," the older of his sisters would tell him. "Do you really want that at your age?" To which K would just straighten himself and pretend he did not know what she was talking about.

But he could not hide it from his friend.

He opted to stay home from the festival preparations despite Tsuzuki and Ayame's strong urging he join them, claiming a pounding headache that wouldn't let him out in the sun. It was all Tsuzuki could do not to call his bluff. But knowing K—as the young woman confided in Tsuzuki as they worked—he would have denied that there was any underlying cause to his fit of melancholy. Apparently he had always been like that.

Tsuzuki couldn't speak to that, but he was determined to get to the bottom of it. So he asked his friend that evening outright, "Do you not want me here?"

K looked horrified as he glanced up from the book he was reading. "Of course I do. I wouldn't have invited you to come with me if I didn't. Why, what makes you say that?"

Because you don't act like it, Tsuzuki thought, but said instead, "Never mind. Come on." And he reached down and pulled K upright by the arm away from his books. "You're not spending the night at home, I don't care what disease you claim you have this time."

"Don't bother. Just . . . go on without me, Tsuzuki. I'll only get in the way. I never have any fun at these sorts of things."

"Liar. Anyone can enjoy himself if he just gives it a chance."

"Well, I'm not getting dressed up," his friend said adamantly, as though that would settle the matter.

"That doesn't matter. Neither am I." In their trousers and shirtsleeves, they might have stood out among the other villagers, and been less comfortable in the heat of the August evening than they would be in yukata, but that didn't matter to Tsuzuki as long as his friend was there with him. "Come _on_ , I'm tired of your excuses. Everyone's expecting you to be there. Ayame's wearing flowers in her hair just for you. . . ."

He hooked an arm around K's midsection once he had him half off the floor, tightly gripping his waist, which was feverishly warm from the day's heat beneath his cotton shirt. Pulling the young man's arm around his own shoulders, he hoisted K the rest of the way up and would have carried him like that all the way to the festival if K had not decided right then that he could stand well enough on his own feet.

He jerked himself away, covering the unusual violence of his actions with a grab for his summer jacket.

"All right," he muttered, "I'll go for a little while if it makes you happy. But you owe me one for this, Tsuzuki."

"We'll see about that." With any luck, Tsuzuki thought, K would recant by the end of the evening.

He still somehow managed to engage K in racing him part of the way to the festival grounds. Once there, surrounded by the wonderful aromas of the food, and the drums beating in time with the cries of the singers and with his pounding heart, it was easy for Tsuzuki to lose himself in the simple pleasure of K's company. And, after losing so many games only to hear K laughing at him for it at his back, Tsuzuki began to suspect, much to his relief, that the reverse was true as well. Just to see K smile again like he had on the train, without any thought for what those around him might think, to see his wide eyes shining in the light of the paper lanterns that bobbed in the breeze over their heads, was plenty reward for the slight trouble in getting him there.

During moments like that, Tsuzuki hardly even noticed the others who passed in and out of their conversations over the course of the evening. He felt as though he had gained something back he had almost forgotten he'd lost; and at the time, he thought that if he grabbed hold of it now, it would last forever.

They parted ways at some point after sundown—sometime after Tsuzuki's sixth skewer of dango and K's beating him royally at a kiosk game of archery—and Tsuzuki took his moment of solitude to wander the outskirts of the festival. Fireflies flitted among the trees just out of the way of the crowds, katydids crying from the grass. The local shrine, decorated for the celebration, was quiet but for the sleepy few who occupied its benches; and Tsuzuki was compelled, as he gazed at its simple solidity, to give a prayer of thanks for what he had enjoyed during his stay to the local deity.

He was just about to return to the crowd when someone latched onto his arm and pressed close.

Tsuzuki laughed, surprised that his friend would be brazen enough to do something like that around so many people, but he was not about to complain. "Hey, K—"

"Shh. Tsuzuki, it's me."

He started at the unexpected voice, and the slim figure of a young woman in summer robes who materialized out of the shadow of the backs of the kiosks. "Ayame? What are you doing back here?"

"Don't tell K," she said sheepishly—yet without any doubt or hesitation, "but I had to tell you while I had the chance. I don't know if I'll ever get another one like it. Tsuzuki, I think I'm in love with you."

Tsuzuki forced a laugh. Surely he had heard wrong. He had just met the girl not even two weeks before, not nearly enough time for feelings such as those to develop, let alone when he had done nothing to encourage them. How could he, even if he had been attracted to her, when her hand already belonged to his one dearest friend? "But your engagement—"

"Who told you about that?" For a moment, her voice wavered in uncertainty. Then, "No. No, I don't want to call it off. It just means too much to our families, so I couldn't . . . But this is something else entirely. I didn't plan for it. I would be happy being K's wife, but you see, that's exactly why he can't know. Besides," she added, almost accusingly, "you wouldn't want to jeopardize your friendship either, would you?"

"Jeopardize it with what?" The smile remained stubbornly on his lips as he said it, a flimsy shield against the answer he wasn't sure he wanted to hear. "Come on, stop joking around. I know you don't really love me. How could you? You hardly know me."

"I know enough to know how I feel. And how you look at me, with those beautiful eyes, the way you smile back. . . . I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. I care about K, I really do, and it's not like I wanted to betray my feelings for him, but I couldn't help that very much, now, could I? You know what it would do to him if he found out his fiancee and his best friend—"

"Ayame, stop and think about this. You haven't even heard my side."

"I don't need to."

"Don't you think you're getting ahead of yourself—"

Before he could finish, however, she hooked a hand around the nape of his neck, and was raising herself up on tiptoes to meet his lips.

Her flesh was cool against his, but her slight body was warm and soft through her summer robe, the scent of the lilies she wore in her hair cloyingly sweet. Tsuzuki could have melted in her embrace if it were only that; but the memory of how K had looked down at the dirt of the road when he spoke candidly of this girl, the way he had allowed Tsuzuki to kiss him in their room back at university, perhaps even then imagining Tsuzuki were someone else, someone like Ayame. . . . His sudden shame upon remembering these things would not let him remain passive.

He pulled back, unhooking her arm from around his shoulders despite her reluctance to let him go.

"I can't," he told her, gripping a shoulder strongly in each hand when she began to protest—just hoping it might make her see his sense. "You know I can't allow you to do this. I can't do that to K."

A sound like the scuffing of gravel made them both turn, only to see K standing in the shadow, watching them, still as a statue.

Ayame gasped and spun away from them. It must have hit her all at once, that what she had envisioned for her future was over before it could ever begin, dashed like a vase to ground that could never be put back together. But, really, what had she expected? It was not as though Tsuzuki hadn't warned her, nor was it in his nature to simply let things stand without an explanation.

"K—" he began, letting go of his grip on Ayame.

But his friend would not listen. He backed away, then turned and started purposefully down the road away from them and the festivities.

* * *

"K—wait a minute. . . . Would you please stop and listen to me?"

They were nearly back at his home, the loud music and voices of the festival left far behind them, before K finally turned and acknowledged Tsuzuki. When he did, there were tears in his eyes—tears of anger and betrayal—neither of which Tsuzuki could say were undeserved after what he did.

"So you can tell me what, hm?" he shouted with an agony and force of conviction Tsuzuki had never before witnessed from his friend. "For God's sake, Tsuzuki, what other explanation could there be? I saw it plainly enough with my own eyes." He forced a laugh. "'Plenty of experience,' you said. I was so naive, thinking you were just kidding around. But _Ayame_ , Tsuzuki? After I told you she was my _fiancee_ , after I _confided_ in you—"

"Listen to me—" He made to grab hold of his friend's sleeve, but K jerked himself away as though Tsuzuki would burn him, a horror-stricken look upon his face that pained Tsuzuki to see like little else could. "I didn't mean for that to happen. She just kissed me before I could stop her, and I didn't know what to do—"

"Right. And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Yes! Damn it, it's the truth! When have I ever lied to you?"

K turned away from him again, shaking his head, and disappeared around the side of the nearest house in a huff, so that Tsuzuki had to hurry to catch up with him as he tried to reason with him:

"You can blame me all you want. I should have seen it coming, I should have been more observant, but I wasn't, for whatever reason. Maybe I didn't want to see it. But that's no excuse. Don't think I wouldn't take it all back if I could, in a heartbeat. You're my dearest friend, and I would never dream of doing anything to hurt you. Please, you have to believe me. I'm begging your forgiveness, K! I don't want anything to change between us—"

"Then, am I also supposed to believe Ayame just couldn't help herself? That this is just the effect you have on people?"

Then it was Tsuzuki's turn to be confused. He stopped in his tracks and stared, finding nothing to say in response, which only seemed to anger K more.

He strode back over to Tsuzuki when he saw him like that, and Tsuzuki would not have been surprised in the least if his friend had tried to hit him. He would have deserved it, and K's demeanor certainly threatened something violent.

Instead, he half sobbed, half shouted: "I invited you on this trip because I needed you here with me. I need that so much, Tsuzuki. I don't understand what it is you do to me, but sometimes it feels like you're the only thing making this life bearable. Ever since I met you I've wanted to trust you, to be able to be myself with you—Christ, Tsuzuki, I've _treasured_ your friendship since the first day I knew you—and now you do this to me? I . . . I don't know how to take it! Did this thing between us ever mean anything, or was it all some cruel joke to you from the start? Do you have any idea how much it hurts? Do you even have the faintest idea how much it kills me just being around you?"

His words washed over Tsuzuki like a tide, too much for him to take in at once, to make sense out of. "I-I'm sorry, K," he said, "but I don't think I understand what you're talking about."

"Oh, I'm sure you don't. That's just the way you are, isn't it? You make people think you fancy them, and then you stab them in the back when it suits you—"

"Look, what happened with her . . . I don't care a whit about Ayame—"

"I'm not talking about Ayame!"

Tsuzuki could only blink. If she wasn't at the crux of their argument, then what was it about?

When he could think of nothing to say, K just shook his head, as though Tsuzuki had already proven his point for him. "Never mind," he muttered, his voice trembling. "I told you it would be a mistake to drag me out tonight. You should have just let me be. Just . . . forget it. Forget I ever said anything, and just forget about me. I want you out of my house in the morning—"

It was not something he could easily explain, but the utter finality of his words suddenly frightened Tsuzuki so much that he feared for his friend. What he had done to K to make him act this way, he did not know, but it had nothing to do with anything at the festival. All at once K seemed to him like water slipping through his fingers; and in his desperation to salvage any part of what they had only hours ago, Tsuzuki reached out in order to force K to face him.

He felt K jump beneath his touch, and then there was a flash through the dark as the young man spun to defend himself.

When he was facing Tsuzuki again, it was with the blade of a scythe hovering between them, snatched from where some neighbor had left it after coming in from the fields. Tsuzuki knew not to be fooled by the way the moonlight shone so dully on its worn surface: it could still cut him with ease if he made one wrong move.

"Just stay away from me!" K swallowed hard, slowly backing away toward the lee of the house. "I mean it. Don't come near me, don't touch me, don't even speak to me. I'm through with it, Tsuzuki, with you, with all of this _nonsense_ —"

"Let's be reasonable—"

" _Reasonable?_ You want reason, then you explain it! Please explain it to me, because I'm tired of trying to understand why you make me feel the way I do. What is it you want from me?"

Tsuzuki started, as if the blade had already sunk into him, just left of center. What did he want, besides K's trust and companionship back? For those honest eyes to show true happiness again? For his friend to love him as much as Tsuzuki loved him, as much as he had loved Ruka—was there anything so wrong in wanting that?

"I love you. You're my dearest friend and I don't want to lose you."

The words slipped out as naturally as thinking them, and they did not sound wrong or complicated to Tsuzuki's ears, even if he could not say the same for K.

Who gritted his teeth in his confliction. "Can't you see? That's just the problem—"

"Why? Because it's wrong? What could be more natural than wanting to be beside the one person who means more to you than anything in the world? You said you need me, K," Tsuzuki tried, "well, I need you too. That faith you always spoke of . . . Maybe I don't deserve it, but I would do anything you asked me to just to have that back. We can go back to the way things were. I promise you, nothing has to change if we don't want it to. Our friendship doesn't have to end because of this."

He might as well have been speaking to his sister. Those were the words he should have said to her all those years ago; perhaps if he had, she would never have left him without a word. If only he had been able to make her see there was nothing abnormal about the nature of his love, nothing frightening about its intensity.

He saw the uncertainty in K's eyes and knew that, weak though his argument might have been—and so wholly dependent on faith—there was a truth to it that neither of them really wanted to deny.

All at once, the scythe's blade that hovered between them was too much for Tsuzuki to ignore. He couldn't be sure which of them K's desperation posed a greater danger to—Tsuzuki or himself—but he could not allow it to remain between them, one way or another. A loud crack split the air as the first of that night's fireworks was lit, and K turned toward it instinctively, his eyes wild in the flash of light. It was then that Tsuzuki saw his chance, and he lunged forward to grab the scythe from K's hands.

It should have been a simple thing to do. Nothing Tsuzuki could have foreseen told him otherwise. He did not expect K to hold on to the scythe as tightly as he did, or for him to fight Tsuzuki for control. He did not take into account the utter dark of the shadows between the houses, nor how quickly mistakes could happen. He could make out nothing in the dark but the white of K's collar against his pale throat, the only sound over the crack of the fireworks the frantic scuffing of their shoes in the dust. It didn't occur to him that there was something gravely wrong until he heard the choked grunt at his ear.

K's grip loosened on the blade's handle, and Tsuzuki used the chance to pull it away, not expecting the wet resistance he encountered when he did, or that K would crumple and collapse as soon as he let go.

He fell to his side on the dirt walk, gasping feebly, and the wan moonlight illuminated then what Tsuzuki could not see before. A thin red trickle ran from the corner of his mouth, and further down, beneath his summer jacket, his white shirt front was stained dark with blood.

Tsuzuki dropped to his knees, the scythe forgotten in the dust. His hands trembled something awful and he cursed at what he saw before some instinct kicked in and made him press both hands to the wound. K moaned when he did so, a wet, inhuman sound that drew incoherent apologies like Hail Marys from Tsuzuki's own lips. Nothing he did appeared to do any good. He couldn't see the wound, but he knew it was deep, and in a bad place. More blood welled up, squeezing out between his fingers at the pressure he applied, making Tsuzuki blanch and curse as he never had cause to before—but, damn it, he had only been trying to help, this wasn't supposed to happen, and there was no way he should have been bleeding so much so fast, how was Tsuzuki supposed to make everything all right like he'd promised K if he didn't have the time to take it back?

Someone was calling K's name—someone, Tsuzuki realized belatedly, besides himself. He recognized Ayame's voice, and her shuffling footsteps as she hurried in the direction they had gone.

"Over here!" The words tore themselves from Tsuzuki's throat, even if he couldn't tear his eyes away from the blood, just hoping she would be able to follow his voice. "Hurry, we're over here! Come on, please, hurry!"

"Tsuzuki?" She sounded wary even as she rounded the corner. "What's wrong? What are you—"

Her question broke off in a sob as she saw, and both hands flew to her mouth to hold back a scream.

"He needs help, bad—now—please, call for a doctor or _something_ —"

Whether it was to follow his order or not, she fled the scene, running back toward the festivities as though her life were at stake. Tsuzuki could not dismiss the abject horror he had witnessed in her eyes, nor the fact that part of it had been directed at him. It chilled him to the bone, and he could only hope that his pleas for help had been heard.

As the light show continued, oblivious to what had happened, Tsuzuki peeled off his jacket, bundled it up, and pressed it hard to K's chest in what seemed like a futile effort to keep what blood he had left in. It felt like forever had passed before he finally saw the lanterns bobbing through the night toward them. But his relief that help had at last arrived was short lived when the group summoned by Ayame's cries were able to grasp the situation for themselves.

They set down the lanterns with such haste they nearly dropped them, throwing themselves to their knees beside K.

"He's cut deep. This is a lot of blood. . . ."

"What happened here? How long has he been like this?"

"Answer the question, lad!"

Tsuzuki suddenly found he couldn't find the words with which to do so. He wanted so much to explain to them all that it was an accident, a horrible horrible accident that wasn't meant to turn out this way, but his tongue just sat in his mouth, refusing to work. Their questions came too fast, running together like a blur in his mind, like some other language he couldn't understand. He hadn't the strength to resist when a couple of men hauled him roughly to his feet and out of the way. Others pulled open K's shirt, the woman who knelt over him pressing her sleeve over her mouth and turning her head, uttering a string of _nenbutsu_ under her breath. Tsuzuki knew they were only there to help, but they weren't doing _anything_ , and only seemed to him like so many ants, like crows swarming over his friend's body, that he wanted nothing more than to scatter away, to preserve what dignity K had left.

He didn't hear the words that pronounced the young man dead. He didn't hear K's mother's screams when she arrived to find her son covered in blood—and Tsuzuki just standing there, smeared in it up to the elbows, the blade that did the deed lying in the dust at his feet. The blood pounded in his ears, rising in volume with each boom and blast of light in the sky to the point of drowning out all other sounds around him, and he could do nothing but stand and stare, growing increasingly numb to his surroundings, retreating further into himself.

Then he felt it, deep down within: the first stirrings, murmurings, of that thing within him. . . .

That thing which had not raised its head since he was a young child, when it made him kill that boy and he had sworn never to let it awaken ever again. He could hear it accusing him from within his self now—in K's mother's voice as she screamed and shouted at him in her grief, as the villagers around her put the pieces together for themselves, and turned to him with eyes that seemed to look down into his very soul:

You did this, they said. You killed him. It was your fault. To think he trusted you—to think we all trusted you—and you murdered him—you monster, you murdered him. You _demon_. . . .

Yes, a demon. An abomination. That's what I am, isn't it?

He could feel it, his true nature, coiling ice-cold inside him as he stared down at the lifeless body of the friend he had loved and betrayed—and at his blood, running out and soaking his shirt and the earth on which he lay like there was no end to it, running out over everything, over everyone, out to the periphery of Tsuzuki's vision where it crept in upon him, to reap what a lifetime of sin, a life of sinful existence, had sown. . . .

They were going to kill him. Tsuzuki caught it in their voices, in the iron grips of the men still holding his arms, forcing him to his knees in their outrage with what he had done. He didn't have to answer for himself. They all knew what he did, accident or no. Arresting him wasn't justice enough for what he had done, even if these were civilized times. He was a monster, wasn't he? And a monster could not be allowed to live.

It was chaos all around Tsuzuki, but he alone remained cool and calm as he glanced around at the townspeople in their uproar, his mind busy forming his plan of escape. He had already failed K—K who had trusted him more than he ever deserved—so what else was there to save now but himself, even if he did not deserve to live?

In the blink of an eye the scythe was back in his hand, and the men who were restraining him fell to the ground. They did not see their ends coming as he slashed out at them with the blade already stained with his friend's blood, then moved on to the others who stood closest by.

Some of those ran. Most just let him cut them down, staring at him with eyes wide in disbelief, as though certain that some ounce of sanity within him would stay his hand at the last second, convinced to the end he was more civilized than this. For that they had only themselves to blame. Could they not see that there was no more sanity left within him? It died with K—that is, if it had ever been there to begin with, and if it had not been merely an illusion, an act he put on to convince himself he wasn't really this _thing_ , this monster who couldn't help himself, who felt exhilaration and purpose as he swung the scythe, as he cut into their flesh, who reveled in the delicate beauty in the splash pattern of their blood, and saw absolution in the ablution of their life.

It made Tsuzuki feel ill—the gore that surrounded him, the sweet-copper smell of it, the strange joy he received from ending another life, the evil that he knew that was—all of it made him want to retch, and yet he could not stop himself. He had become an observer in his own body. His limbs moved as though with a will of their own, to a tune that told him this was only right, it was what he had been _made for_ , and he could find neither the strength nor the reason to refute it any longer. He abhorred himself for it, but he could not disagree with the voice inside that whispered, This must be done.

Someone knocked over one of the lanterns as they fled, and as it went up in flame, the dry weeds that were near it caught fire and passed it quickly on. It spread to the house beside him, lapping eagerly at the sliding doors like dry kindling. The pools of blood shimmered like spilled ink in the flickering golden light, and if he had been able to see himself, he would have found eyes as crimson as blood and crazed as a starved lion's staring back at him. More townspeople would be coming for him in good time, more souls to feed the darkness that was fast uncoiling itself from within him—if they did not take him down first. He knew they would try.

Through the roar of the fire in his ears now he could begin to make out the distant screams, the moans of the injured scattered around him. The ringing of a bell, but he might have imagined that. In this dry heat, it was only a matter of time before the flames leaped to the next house over, and the next. . . .

Let them all burn, every last one, he murmured to the sky. Or the thing inside him did. He could not be sure anymore where one ended and the other began. What did it really matter? If it was going to end at all, this was how it had to be: the world consumed in fire.


	4. Chapter 4

Tsuzuki had not seen the house in six long years, but it looked the same as he remembered it. Nothing had changed.

Nor was he quite sure how he came to be there. The last hours—or were they days? yes, most likely days, but he honestly couldn't remember—were a blur. A kaleidescope of dark shape and shadows. The flicker of flames across the exposed beams of a once thatched-roofed house . . . or was it the flicker of the sun through the trees? He couldn't say. He really couldn't say. He couldn't even explain how he'd walked up this road when he hardly had the strength left to stand. His ears were ringing with an echoing din that wouldn't leave him be, like so many cicadas, crying out in agony, splitting apart, splitting his mind, like so many dying screams—

He shook them from his head. None of that mattered now. He was here, he was finally here.

He slipped inside the gate and knocked on the front door of the house. After a moment, he heard a man's voice moving closer from inside.

His uncle opened the door. He recoiled when he saw the man on his doorstep, unable to help the automatic response. "Can . . . can I help you?"

Tsuzuki tried to look past his shoulder. He didn't remember his uncle seeming so small, but he was still blocking Tsuzuki's view of the house's interior. "Where is she?"

"Where is who? I don't know who you are or what you're talking about, but I'm going to call the police—"

"You know who I mean." He had to speak quickly, he didn't have time to waste. "Where's Ruka? Where's my sister?"

His uncle started then, and, despite his revulsion, leaned forward, searching for Tsuzuki's eyes beneath his tousled hair.

Their violet shade was unmistakable.

"Asato?" The name was hardly a whisper from the man's lips. It was as if he couldn't believe his own eyes—or didn't want to. "What the hell's happened to you? Why are you covered in blood?"

Was he? Tsuzuki blinked down at himself, but he couldn't remember how he got the stains that covered his sleeves, and the front of his shirt, and the knees of his trousers. . . . Or maybe he did. He felt like it would come to him if he just tried to remember, but it hurt too much when he did that so he stopped. Was it his blood, or someone else's?

It didn't matter. "I said, where's Ruka? Ruka!" He stumbled into the household.

At first his uncle reached out a hand to steady Tsuzuki, but he quickly thought better of it and, horrified, tried to flatten himself against the door jamb instead until the other had passed. The last thing he wanted was his estranged nephew barging into his home without any warning, covered in blood and clearly more than half out of his wits, but what could he do? Force him out? That would involve touching him. Try to reason with him? It looked like a hopeless cause. Better to let him rant until he wore himself down and could be handed over to the authorities.

"Ruka!" Tsuzuki continued to call out as he traipsed into the hallway, dirt and caked blood smearing on the hardwood floor wherever he stepped. " _Sister?_ Where are you?"

Startled by the noise, his wife came into the hall investigate. Her mouth flew open in a silent scream when she saw Tsuzuki, and she backed away when the young man's violet eyes alit on her.

"Go and get a policeman," his uncle told her, and tried again: "Asato! Asato, listen to me. If you do not control yourself and leave our house, I am going to have you arrested—"

"Where's my sister?" The words were gritted out through his teeth now, his weird eyes full of tears that mixed with the dirt and gore on his face so that it looked like he was crying blood. It shook his uncle to his soul, and a very real terror rose within him when Tsuzuki grabbed both his arms. His grip was heavy, as though the earth itself were trying to pull him down and it was taking all his energy to resist. "Why are you keeping her from me?" he sobbed. "Where is she?"

"She's dead." His uncle was only too relieved to say the words, in his anger and disgust. "She died three years ago."

"No. . . ." Tsuzuki's grip tightened.

"Call the police," his uncle told his wife, panic fueling his words now; but to his frustration she continued to just stand there in shock.

Tsuzuki shook his head, grimacing. He looked to his uncle as though he believed if he only expended enough effort, he could keep the truth out. "No, you're lying. . . . She can't be . . . I would have known. Someone would have sent word, I would have felt it—"

"We never told you because she wanted nothing more to do with you! You're such an abomination, Asato, your own sister couldn't stand the sight of you—of being seen with you!"

It was his uncle's wife who had spoken, the woman who had resented his presence in her household from the beginning when he was young and orphaned. They were not words his uncle was proud of hearing, but they were the truth, and had been waiting far too many years to be said that in the end it didn't matter who said them.

A strange, keening moan like that of a beaten dog escaped Tsuzuki, and he pressed his hands over his ears and collapsed to his knees on the floor. His whole body convulsed as though he were going to be sick, but it was just as likely he was about to weep. His uncle didn't really care which. He had had to suffer enough on account of this bastard child over the years, first with the loss of his own sister, then his niece. If he hadn't put him in a boarding school all those years ago, who knew what the boy would have done to his household as well. And while it was disgusting to see a grown man acting in this way, he could not say he felt sorry for him at all.

"It was consumption," Tsuzuki's uncle told him as he sat like that, and not without his own bitter note of regret, "just like her mother. I can take you to her gravestone if you still don't believe me."

Tsuzuki showed no sign of having acknowledged that, only made himself even smaller on the hallway floor.

There was nothing his uncle could say that would force him to accept reality. That much the man could see. He shook his head, letting out his breath and putting a hand on his pocket watch for comfort. He told the young man in the frankest terms possible: "Look, Asato, what your aunt said is correct. Ruka did not want to contact you, so we thought it would be best if we continued to honor her wishes and not tell you of her passing. You can hate us for it as much as you want, swear you don't believe it, but none of that is going to bring her back, so you might as well accept the facts as they stand. As far as I can see, you've only brought this on yourself. I don't know what you did to make Ruka want to forget you even existed, but now that I see you here like this—showing up unannounced, covered in blood—I really cannot say that I blame her."

And with that, he strode past Tsuzuki's huddled form to the telephone on the hallway table, startling his wife out of her trance as he did so. If she would not do it, he would just have to call for a police officer himself. His nephew was so out of it from whatever mess he had come here from, the man doubted it would be any trouble at all to have him taken into custody. Where they took him from there . . . he only hoped it was far away from here.

He did not think there was any harm in turning his back on Tsuzuki in the state he was in, but that was where he was gravely mistaken.

* * *

When Dr Muraki Yukitaka saw the young man covered in blood on the front step of his clinic, his first instinct was to find the source of his bleeding and stop it.

He rushed the young man to an operating room, had him sedated when he put up a fight that threatened to hurt the nurses, and stripped him of his dirtied and torn clothes to better see his wounds.

But none appeared.

No matter, Yukitaka thought. It must have been someone else's blood the young man's clothes had been soaked in. Whether that made him a murderer or a victim of hapless circumstance, he could not know until the man was awake and lucid enough to speak. So until then, he was given a clean robe and a bed, and his few personal effects were examined for any clue as to his identity. Like his injuries, however, there was none.

When the stranger had regained consciousness, Yukitaka went to talk to him. A nurse had brought the man food and water, but both remained untouched on the table beside his bed. No doubt he was troubled by whatever he had witnessed before coming to the clinic, and so for that Yukitaka could not blame him for having no appetite or resisting the efforts of strangers who were only trying to help him. The man was sitting up in his bed, staring blankly out the window, and it was only after some persistence that the doctor was able to get his attention.

"What's your name?" he asked.

But the young man would not answer the question.

"Do you remember who you are?"

The young man mouthed something inaudible, but it did not look like a name. Come to think of it, he may have been simply testing his mouth to see if it still worked.

"All right. We'll come back to that later. Do you know where you are?"

"At a clinic . . ." His voice was quiet, broken and wavering, a ghost of what it once must have been. "A clinic in Tokyo. . . ." He knew which one precisely.

It took Yukitaka slightly aback. He could remember the name of the clinic but not his own? "Yes. . . . If you know that much, then can you tell me how you came to be here?"

"Don't know. Walked, I guess. Where is Dr H?"

"You walked. I see." It sounded like a lie. "And nobody stopped you or tried to help you?"

"Why would they . . . ?"

"You were . . . drenched in blood. You don't remember?"

The young man looked down at himself, at his spotless hospital gown, knitting his brow in confusion.

"How did you know where to go?"

"I have to see Dr H." The young man looked up at Yukitaka then, and the doctor was struck by the color of his eyes under the sunlight: the clearest amethyst purple. He must not have noticed before in his haste to help the young man, but there was something inexplicably unnatural about their color, impossible. Yukitaka jerked back involuntarily, and the eyes followed him. "I came to see him," the young man said. "Where is he?"

Yukitaka swallowed, and cleared his throat. "Why do you need to see him?"

"Because. . . . He can help me."

"I can help you."

"No. . . ."

"Yes, I can, if you just help me to understand a few things. Tell me what happened to you. Who brought you here? How did you get to be covered in blood when there's not a scratch on you?"

"Please. I need to talk to him."

"Was there someone else injured besides you? Did you hurt someone?"

"Where is Dr H? I need to talk to him! This is his clinic! Why won't you let me talk to him?"

His outburst was sudden—undoubtedly the other patients could hear his shouting down the hall—but just as short lived. Yukitaka sighed. The young man would not appreciate what he had to say. "This is my clinic. I've been in charge of it for a couple of years now. If you're referring to the doctor who ran it before that, I'm afraid he passed away before I came here."

The young man mouthed his words, _passed away_ , back like a silent echo. He looked away, saying nothing, but something seemed to crumple inside him, as though beneath a heavy curtain coming down.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that," Yukitaka tried, a little gentler this time. Bedside manner was not one of his strong suits, but he desperately needed information from this young man—anything to indicate what kind of person he was, and what had happened to him. "Now, I'm going to ask you again, and please think hard about this. I know it may be difficult or even painful for you to remember, but I need to know your name. Can you give me that much? Can you tell me where you come from? Whom should I contact about you?"

Perhaps it was all too much too fast. The young man did not answer him. Not then, nor when Yukitaka tried to rephrase his questions a little later. For reasons unknown to him, it seemed as though the young man had made a decision, conscious or otherwise, to completely shut down, and nothing Yukitaka tried would make him change his mind.

* * *

With a resigned sigh, Yukitaka left the patient's name on the chart as "unknown." That was a good word to describe most of him: his history, his place of birth, his social status. His reason for coming to this clinic covered in someone else's blood.

His age Yukitaka judged to be eighteen or nineteen. He might have been off the mark in that estimate, but he doubted it. He was in good health, trim, a little on the light side but still within the healthy range of weight for his frame. His complexion was fair, his hair a fine dark brown cut in the modern fashion. His body and facial features were symmetrical and well-proportioned. Yukitaka could find none of the usual, only too human flaws when he examined the patient in full: no old scars or signs of broken bones, and hardly any moles. He was, if the doctor allowed himself to be subjective, exceedingly handsome. Some might even say a classic example of male beauty. In fact, his perfection was as close to divine as a human being could get.

Which only made his mysterious ailment all the more puzzling, as Yukitaka could find nothing at all physically wrong with him.

Nothing, that was, except for his eyes, which were a brilliant purple—clear as cut amethyst, yet deep as a sea of Burgundy. They had to be an aberration, the result of some sort of mutation that was unique in recorded medicine. No human had ever been known to possess eyes that color; and as far as he knew, it was just as rare in the animal kingdom. In fact, only the demons of legends had purple eyes. Yet for all their unnaturalness, they attracted Yukitaka to their depths on an intellectual level, stoking his desire as a scientist and a doctor to explain what he did not understand.

On a more human, aesthetic level as well, he felt himself pulled into those eyes by the pain he saw in them—nebulous and unfathomable, yet strangely beautiful in their inner tragedy. Whatever those eyes saw as they stared vacantly at the clinic's ceiling or at the tiny garden outside the window, Yukitaka was not sure he wanted to know.

And yet his curiosity about the young man would not let him rest.

Perhaps it was fate, then, when he opened his newspaper the next day to glimpse the headline buried in one of the back pages. Police were searching for the individual who had brutally attacked a local businessman and his wife in their modest home. There was no sign of forced entry, as though the perpetrator had been invited in, but the deceased had no living family to speak of, and thus far examination of their contacts in the community had turned up no possible suspects.

Yukitaka studied what few details they released about the manner of the couple's murder; and vague though it was to protect the public's sensibilities, it was apparent that whoever committed the crime would not have come away from such a barbaric act without some blood on his person. Not only that, but the date of the double murder was the same day the mysterious young man had shown up on his clinic's porch, and Yukitaka was too much a man of method to believe in mere coincidences.

Rather than turn the young man over to the police, however, he decided to try and ask his patient directly.

"Can you read?" he asked the young man the next time he appeared to be responsive, giving the nurse who was unsuccessfully trying to coax him to eat a much-needed break.

The young man turned those strange purple eyes to look at him, and Yukitaka had no choice but to take the acknowledgment as an affirmation.

He put the paper before the patient, with the article about the murdered couple front and center.

"Do you know anything about this?"

The young man stared at the paper for a long period of time, in silence, during which time he appeared to in fact be reading. But as the silence drew on, and the young man showed no reaction to the article whatsoever, Yukitaka began to have his doubts.

He lowered his voice to a murmur, and told the patient: "The police won't say as much, but it's obvious the man who did this must have been covered in blood when he left the scene of the crime. Was it their blood you had on you when you came to us the other day? Were you responsible?"

The young man said nothing.

"Did you kill those people?"

Again, silence.

Nor could Yukitaka take his lack of reaction as either denial or an admission of guilt. In fact, the longer the patient stared blankly at the paper, the more it seemed as though, to him, Yukitaka simply wasn't there.

The doctor thought of threatening him with the possibility of life in prison, if not a death by hanging, but he doubted it would garner any more reaction than his present tactics. Furthermore, he found he really did not care whether the young man was guilty. He had no intention of turning him over to the police one way or another. As a doctor, Muraki Yukitaka felt a calling to help this young man, rather than send him to a sure death. Besides, he was not only clearly sick—mentally or otherwise—but also such a strange specimen of a man that Yukitaka could not conscionably hand him over to the authorities, knowing what they would do to him, and lose what he was already beginning to suspect was a biologically unique individual.

For the meantime, though, he knew he had to have patience. Perhaps as the days wore on, the answers he sought would all be revealed in their own due time.

* * *

It wasn't deja vu. Yukitaka had in fact seen this scene before, three times a day for a little over a week. Once again, the tray of food that had gone into the unknown patient's room a few hours before came back out utterly untouched.

"Mrs Tsuchiya," he stopped the nurse who was carrying the tray away, "how long has it been since that patient's eaten anything?"

"I've been bringing him his meals every day," she told him with an exasperated sigh, "and every single time I've taken it back away like this. I never see him touch any of it. In fact, I honestly can't say whether he's eaten anything since he's been here."

"How can that be possible?"

"In my opinion, Doctor? Maybe he's trying to starve himself to death."

Yukitaka quickly dismissed the idea. Not because he thought it was truly out of the question. The simple fact of the matter was, he was a doctor. He had vowed to save that young man when he came to this clinic; it was the duty of his profession, and he would not allow the patient's eccentricities to get in the way of Yukitaka's seeing him to a full recovery. That was why he allowed him to stay here, despite the part of him that knew he should have handed his patient over to the police long ago.

Besides, the young man had dragged himself here, rather than thrown himself in the river or in front of an automobile. Did that not indicate a will to live, at very least on some unconscious level?

Perhaps that was why he said a little more coldly than he intended to the nurse: "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the patient is unable to feed himself?"

"Yes, Doctor. I'll try that immediately."

He could not but notice the edge in Mrs Tsuchiya's voice, however. Of course the same thought had occurred to her; she was not incompetent.

But it did not make Yukitaka feel any better when, over the next few days, he was able to witness first-hand her and the other nurses' unsuccessful attempts at getting the patient to eat. They might as well have been feeding a stone statue for all their efforts bore fruit. They had ways of making him open his mouth and could put a glass of water to his lips, but they could do nothing to make him swallow any of it.

The younger nurses whispered when they didn't think Yukitaka could hear that the patient was worse than a baby, or the doddering old men who came here to die. It was a shame, really, to see someone so young and handsome acting so disgusting. If he didn't want to eat, they said, why didn't he just say so so they could leave him alone? "Maybe he's going into hibernation—you know, like a squirrel or a bulb tuber waiting out the winter," one of them whispered in jest to another, prompting a fit of laughter from her colleague. "Really, have you ever heard of a human being hibernating? Ridiculous. . . ."

Yukitaka could not explain why overhearing that chatter angered him like it did, but he did not chastise them, only redoubled his efforts—even as it became apparent even Mrs Tsuchiya was quickly losing her seemingly infinite patience, as she had to wipe spilled rice porridge from the young man's throat and yukata again and again. It was embarrassing to watch.

At the same time, however, Yukitaka could clearly see that the problem was not that the young man could not eat, but that he would not. Mrs Tsuchiya's eyes when she looked up at the doctor standing in the doorway told him enough: maybe he just wants to die.

Maybe he did, Yukitaka conceded. But that did not mean they should give up.

* * *

The patient has not eaten nor drunk anything since he was first admitted to my clinic three weeks ago. Despite our repeated efforts, he continues to refuse any kind of nourishment, including intravenous saline drips, which he simply rips out when no one is watching.

Somehow despite the lack of nourishment, his condition has hardly worsened in all that time.

I have noted a slight drop in the patient's weight. However, where any normal human being would have already suffered the effects of dehydration, none are present. Nor does his body seem to be reallocating nutrients to its more vital functions, as one would expect to see in a patient who has been steadily starving himself. I do not know how it is possible, but our mystery patient thus far seems to be perfectly capable of living without food or water.

I have devised several tests in the hopes of finding the root cause of his miraculous self-sustainment, but so far none has been successful. Nor has the patient himself been of any help in this matter, as he continues to refuse to say anything. We do not even know his name. In fact, he has not uttered a word since the first day he was in our care. Either he possesses extraordinary willpower, or he is suffering some sort of severe on-going mental trauma, either resulting from external stress or psychological disease. It is quite a stalemate we are caught in, as I cannot properly diagnose him without knowing what induced him to this stubborn silence in the first place. 

He has not slept since that first day, either, except when administered tranquilizers. The rest of his time is spent in a state of absent-minded wakefulness in which lucidity can come and go seemingly at random. Not eating is one thing, a merely physical matter, but I cannot grasp how one can continue with this sleeplessness and not go completely out of his mind. Again, it leads me to wonder what happened to this young man before he stumbled upon our clinic, but I fear unless he suddenly starts speaking again, even science may be hopelessly inadequate to answer that question. . . .

Yukitaka removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. The patient's illness was an enigma to the doctor that wore on him to the point of physical exhaustion when he expended too much energy in the increasingly futile struggle to solve it. Even the phonograph playing a soothing waltz nearby failed to calm his restless mind. The music was not intended for his benefit anyway. It was to calm his patients, and distract their thoughts if only temporarily from their own maladies.

There was one on whom it had no effect, however, and Yukitaka no longer knew why that should still surprise him.

It had been three months since that journal entry—almost four since the patient landed, after a sort, on his doorstep—and in that time there had been no change in his condition but a slight decline. Not even the decline the doctor would have expected. He was well enough to hold up his own head and sit in the wheelchair Yukitaka had provided for him; but he was too weak to right himself, let alone stand. No, the truth of the matter was, he was unwilling to expend the effort to do these things. Yukitaka had little doubt the young man could stand on his head with little trouble . . . _if he only wanted to_. Obviously he still possessed enough control of his faculties to prevent Yukitaka and the nurses from taking the proper measures to keep his body alive.

A nurse opened the door to the veranda to come back inside from the garden; and for a moment, though it was a fine day, the chilly November air caused the doctor to shiver involuntarily.

Sitting across from him, in his hospital robes and with only a quilt over his lap to warm him, the patient did not move. Nor did he show any sign that he had even acknowledged the opening of the door or the cold that came with it. Yukitaka raised his eyes to meet the young man's. The width of his pupils in their crimson irises did change with the light, and the chill brought the same goosepimples to his arms that it did the doctor's. So then, there was someone home; he just wasn't showing himself.

Needing a change of scenery, Yukitaka stood and made his way over to the window. Outside in the small garden, the rose bushes someone had planted all around the clinic years ago were emaciated by the cold, but the asters that had seemingly spontaneously grown up around their roots without any human intervention were blooming brilliantly: hundreds of thumbnail-sized blue and violet eyes staring back at him. He turned away and cleared his throat.

"'Why do I overlive,'" the words rose from memory to his lips, "'why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out to deathless pain? How gladly would I meet mortality my sentence, and be earth insensible. . . .'"

For a moment he savored the archaic feel of the words in his mouth, like the flavors of a cigar rolled around on the tongue before the smoke must be exhaled. Something in the journal entry had made him think of that line. The anguish of that first man who spoke for all of men was something he could not feel himself—his role in this world was to stave off death, not hasten it—but something in it struck a chord, perhaps the elusive answer to the mystery of his patient. "Is that what keeps you like this?" he asked the young man, facing the window. "Is it death you've come to me to wait for?"

Yukitaka knew better by now than to expect a reply, but he turned to look at his patient nonetheless, hoping against hope that young man might at last show some sign that he had heard the doctor's words—that they had had any effect on him. Anything at all.

But once again his patient was silent and unresponsive.

Yukitaka lowered his voice.

"Tell me what I must do if I'm to understand who you are, where you came from," he said to the young man. "Give me some sign if you won't speak." It felt somewhat like he imagined it would speaking to an individual in a coma, or to a late family member's ashes at their gravestone. As it was, Yukitaka had never had cause to do such a thing, though he had often witnessed others doing the same, and wondered if they were really so naive as to think their words were heard; or were they just doing it for their own benefit, to lessen the weight of guilt on their souls?

He could not be sure which, because he felt neither heard nor comfortable as he confided in the young man: "Your life is a mystery to me. Surely you must understand that as a man of science, that unsettles me more than anything else. I must understand you, and yet the more I try to do so, the more I am confused by what I discover and the more I feel shut out by your continued silence. What happened to—"

A noise from the other room startled him to sudden silence, though when he looked he saw it was only one of the nurses helping an elderly patient back to his room.

Finding himself disquietingly self-conscious, Yukitaka went back to the side of the young man's chair before he asked again, in a voice barely above a whisper: "What happened to make you this way? What was so terrible that you shut yourself in your own world like this? You know, some of my staff are saying that the reason you refuse treatment is that you are trying to end your life, but I have my doubts. It is not that I presume to judge whether a life is worthy of throwing away or not, only . . . that I wish I could see what you see, just once, just so I knew how to help you. Just so I _understood_."

The purple eyes rose up to meet his, as though to take him up on the challenge—but only for the briefest of moments, before they were once again looking through Yukitaka into whatever emptiness occupied the patient's thoughts.

Once again Yukitaka sighed, and took his seat on the other side of the table, closing the journal.

Frustration.

For one second he had felt himself on the brink of a breakthrough under his patient's gaze, but all it turned out to be was added frustration. It seemed most of the time now that that was _all_ he understood, and with each day it only grew more layered and nuanced, like a tangle of briars whose buried roots he could never find.

* * *

 _Their forms flashed before his eyes, their outlines hazy but the guilt they dredged up sharp as a cutting dagger. That boy from his village school bleeding on the side of the road, the back of his skull split open. Doctor H in his rose garden, backlit by the summer sun, and his hedge trimmers dripping black ichor. A whole town's worth of blood, drenching the roses like rain. And it was K's, pouring over his fingers like a flooding of the river, dark with mud, as he tried to staunch the flow. Or was he trying to hasten it? He couldn't tell anymore, he just couldn't. Were they really all dead? Did he really do this? Maybe he was imagining every last one of them. Maybe they never existed at all. Maybe it was all just an hallucination, a nightmare. He couldn't tell anymore._

 _The body under him shuddered and spasmed, dark eyes staring at him like the eyes of a dying rabbit or deer. It was K—no, his sister, fighting for every breath, and he couldn't do anything to help her. Everything he tried just made it worse—he held her tighter, trying to keep her from slipping away, and he just lost her that much faster. . . ._

 _"Demon-child. . . ." It was her lips that formed the words, but they came out in a hundred different voices. His mother's. His uncle's wife's as he tore into her barren womb. It was boys with sticks and stones and fists and villagers in a small country town with scythes and swords hidden away since the war—they cut into him, he felt the sting, the tearing of his own flesh, but he didn't die, he couldn't, and blood spilled down their faces, their shoulders, their chests torn and ragged like strips of cloth, like flags in the wind, wavering in the heat of the flames that danced around them. "How could you do this to us?" Everything was flames, flames consumed everything, boiling blood, charring flesh, and still they reached for him, grabbing at him. "We trusted you—you monster! How could you betray us, how could you kill us like this? You should never have been born. You should die! Demon spawn, die for what you've done. . . . You deserve to die!"_

And it's real. He tries to will it away, tells himself he's just imagining things, he's dreaming, but it doesn't work. The vision worms its way into his mind, and it won't go away. It's happening now. He can smell the burning homes and the burning flesh, and this isn't just his imagination, he couldn't make this up. He can't get it out of his nostrils, out of his mouth. The copper tang of blood on his fingers, running down his arms, running down the back of his throat. It's in his eyes and all he can see is red, swelling up over the rooftops in the smoke, licking at his body, begging him for another sacrifice, for _more_. . . .

No more! He can't watch any more! This isn't him, it's some monster that's done all this. Some monster that maybe's inside him, maybe it is him, making him watch its play of destruction. . . . But no. No, they have the wrong person. It's not his fault. He's not a demon. Ruka assured him of that—

"She wanted nothing more to do with you! You're an abomination! She couldn't stand the sight of you!"

No! That's a lie! She loved him! She's here with him now. He can feel her familiar hand on his shoulder as she leans down—and he sees her dead for three years, for five, for ten years now, and the worms in her lungs have eaten away at her arms and through her breast, and her beautiful eyes—

Make it go away.

That's the only thing he can do now. He has to make it go away. His own eyes stare back at him from the opaque brown glass of a jar, warped and hounded and ugly, and it seems to beckon him, to speak to him: yes, he can put an end to this if he wants to. The pain will only last a moment. He can cut this vision out, let it all bleed out. If he no longer exists, he can't see it anymore, right? Maybe then he can finally rest in peace. . . .

* * *

"Doctor, hurry! Come quick!"

Yukitaka hardly had a moment to ask his current patient's forgiveness before he dashed off in the direction of the nurse's scream. The man he was attending would survive his momentary absence, but he could not say the same for whoever had necessitated that call.

"It's that young man with the strange eyes," the nurse said when she caught up with him in the hallway, breathless and holding her chest as though to manually still her racing heart. "Young Sachie was with him when it happened. She said he lashed out at her and shattered the jar, and . . . and then . . ."

She was unable to continue, but what she had already said made Yukitaka increase his pace.

He found the young nurse in question sitting against the door frame, where she had stumbled in her shock. She was biting her knuckle as she stared in the direction of the patient's bed, trying not to cry out.

And what unspeakable horror had garnered such a reaction? The patient was sitting up in bed facing them, but he seemed to be preoccupied with something in his hands. The sunlight coming through his window backlit his figure so that the doctor's eyes first had to adjust in order to see the steady dark stream of blood that fell over his wrist and dripped from between his fingers onto his lap, the bedsheets, and the floor.

Yukitaka hurried to his side, paying little heed to the brown glass of a broken jar for cotton swabs that crunched beneath his shoes. The patient trembled when the doctor grabbed him by the shoulders, but he did not release the white-knuckled grip he had on the piece of glass in his left hand, and otherwise showed no sign whatsoever of recognizing Yukitaka's presence.

The doctor pried his hands apart; and though he had seen his share of factory accidents and knife fights, he was startled by the sheer persistence and violence with which the patient had cut his own wrist. The wound was deep, very deep, and continued to bleed steadily even as Yukitaka applied pressure to the veins feeding it. There could be no doubt about the intention behind such an act, and Yukitaka was relieved that the call had come when it did. If the young man had done the same to his other wrist, or if there had not been someone in the room already to witness it, his actions would almost certainly have proved fatal.

Once he had recovered from the initial shock, taking the necessary measures to save the young man's life came instinctively to Yukitaka, and he worked quickly to staunch the flow of blood, calling for alcohol and gauze and sutures from his stunned staff.

He had the patient chloroformed as well, though aside from the body's automatic tremble of shock, the young man did not even seem to register the pain he surely must have been in. He had seemed reluctant to loosen his grip on the shard of glass—on the very weapon he had used against his own person—which was not inconsistent with the patient's strange, on-again-off-again catatonia. The young nurse who had been with him when it happened had been shocked by his sudden fit of violence, which seemed to have literally sprung out of nowhere, confessing to him later that she had been terrified when he had picked up the piece of broken glass that he would try to hurt her.

Yukitaka was convinced now, however, that the young man's motives had been entirely self-destructive, even more so than his previous refusal to eat; and he wondered, should he expect more attempts like it in the future?

Still, it went against everything he believed in to simply let the patient die.

"'If your right hand offends you, cut it off,'" the doctor thought aloud as he sat with the patient alone later that evening. "Is that what you were thinking? Or were you really trying to end your life?"

The wound had been stitched up and tightly bandaged, and his right hand lay limp at his side. His gown and the bedlinens on which he lay were fresh, the bloodstained ones taken out to be burned. Glass jars and vases of flowers, rubber tubes and medical instruments—anything that might remotely be used as a weapon against oneself was moved out of reach, and Yukitaka was tempted to clear the whole room of them. Even then, though, he knew, the patient could still strangle himself with the bedsheets or bite his own tongue, if he were determined enough.

Of course, the young man did not answer him no matter how long the doctor spoke to him. The sedative had worn off, and his eyes had fallen open to stare at the ceiling, but Yukitaka knew better by now than to think he was awake. Or even asleep, for that matter.

"I wish I had the slightest clue as to what dreams you think are so terrible you'd rather punish yourself with this sort of waking hell," Yukitaka whispered. "As it is, I cannot fathom it. If only you would have confided in me before taking the extreme measures you did. I imagine you must feel trapped in your own mind, but can't you see that that is all the more reason to talk to me? Whatever hell this is, it is a hell of your own choosing. You don't have to be its prisoner. Speak to me, share your troubles with another living soul, and we might banish whatever demons keep you awake all day, together. If you would only trust me."

There was not even a twitch from the young man to indicate he might be on the right path, let alone that he had been heard.

Strangely, though, the longer Yukitaka talked to him, the more it felt like he and the patient had been engaged in active conversation, even though the other remained as unresponsive as a porcelain doll throughout.

He returned the next morning to change the dressings himself, satisfied to see the wound swollen and hot to the touch, but free from infection. Not for the first time he wondered if he should have given the patient morphine for the pain he must certainly have been in, but a niggling sense of curiosity told him to wait until the patient asked for it himself. Yukitaka did not consider himself a sadist—that is, as much as maladies like this young man's titillated him intellectually, he could not say he actually wished him pain—but nor could he say that he did not have an ulterior motive in withholding medication from his strange patient. It was true that he wanted to see how well the patient's body could heal without external help, just as it continued to thrive without sustenance. But was that not just a convenient excuse?

An excuse to see how much pain the young man could bear before he actually cried out for help?

Yukitaka shook his head, and pushed that dark thought back down, deep down inside himself where it belonged. Whatever his personal motives may have been, the simple fact remained that he wanted to help this young man. He certainly did not want to lose him.

"It's been almost four years since you've been here," he told him. "Three years, ten months, and twenty-six days to be precise." His voice filled the space between them in the enclosed room like the voice of a lover, but shamed by that fact though Yukitaka was, there was nothing he was able to do about it. "I don't mind telling you that when you first came to me, I never imagined our relationship would last this long. I imagined you would recover and leave us, or—once you began refusing to eat—that you would waste away and we would eventually lose you. But now. . . ."

Now he wondered how much longer he could keep this going, or if his patient would once again attempt to foil his efforts when he turned his back.

That he had already tried again was Yukitaka's first thought when the nurse in charge of changing the dressings that evening came to find him, breathless. "It's his cut. . . ."

"What? Has he done it again? Has it become infected?"

"No." She laughed then, a shaky laugh that sounded a hair's-breadth from a sob. "It's . . . It's _not there_. I don't know how else to describe it. Doctor, you just have to see it."

He found the patient lying in his bed as always with eyes open to the ceiling. His supine right hand and arm lay naked beside him, and for a moment Yukitaka was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. Did he have the correct arm? There was nothing on that wrist but a thin red line, as though it had been drawn on with ink.

"Did you remove the sutures?" he asked the nurse.

Who shook her head adamantly. "No. It was like that when I took the bandage off—like they had just fallen out all by themselves. I swear to God."

Yukitaka scrutinized the wound, prodding and pulling at the soft skin, but it was not just a trick of the light. Somehow his flesh seemed to have pulled itself back together; new cells were already forming, glistening raw and pink between the lips of the cut. Yukitaka had expected to see some initial signs of healing, but there was no way a human being could recover from what this young man had done to himself so quickly, and with such a lack of nutrients. One of his colleagues had to have been pulling a stunt. Yukitaka was not sure how it was done or who would have possessed the ingenuity with which to pull it off, but that was the only _logical_ explanation for it he could see.

"It's a miracle," the same nurse told him later in an awe-filled whisper. "A miracle, pure and simple." Not even a day had passed before the patient's wrist had healed to the point of being indistinguishable from its mate—no trace at all of the savage injury done to it. There was no medical explanation for such a rapid recovery, and in fact no better word than the one she had used to describe it: a miracle. All Yukitaka's schooling kept him from accepting that word, but what other way did he have to explain it?

At first the thought made him uneasy. It was an aberration of nature that any human should be able to heal from an injury of that sort in so short a time. But was it really a miracle, or was it an innate blessing?

To the young nurse who had witnessed him cutting himself with the glass shard it must have seemed like a curse, for she left the clinic with little more than a word's notice. Perhaps it was because she had feared for her own safety like she said, but Yukitaka wondered if she hadn't also caught a glimpse of the patient's inner darkness herself just before he tried to end his life. And to the patient himself, his continued existence seemed like anything but a blessing.

But to Yukitaka, he was—if the doctor would pardon the superstitious nature of the phrase—a godsend. No, Yukitaka believed in gods and demons no more than he believed the world was flat. But if, in fact, his mysterious patient were possessing of some heretofore unknown, extraordinary regenerative power, then undoubtedly the key to explaining it was inside. That was, it was in the young man's genes. And if that were the case, then that meant these remarkable abilities of his could be quantified and tested, and maybe even reproduced. The applications, once Yukitaka allowed himself to ponder them, were possibly endless.

And it was for that reason that Yukitaka swore he would do whatever was necessary to figure out once and for all where his patient came from, and what, precisely, he was.

* * *

A year passed by, and then another. June came again, and with it the first roses in the clinic garden, whose stalks grew more wild and tangled each year.

Yukitaka felt much the same way. Only a few years had passed since he undertook what seemed to him, as he sat at his mysterious patient's bedside that fateful evening, to be his life's work; yet when he looked in the mirror, the eyes that peered back seemed too exhausted and haggard to belong to the relatively young man that they did, and dark circles and crow's feet had begun to creep in around them. Ironically, it seemed, given the nature of his studies these days, the long, sleepless nights spent staring at samples under the microscope and religiously compiling his research had already done more to age him than his entire tenure with his old university.

He could not escape these changes being noticed by the clinic's staff as well. It seemed that every three or four months he was going through almost an entirely new batch of nurses; only those who were more mature and settled stayed longer than six. He faulted them for it, told himself they lacked the proper constitution needed in this profession, yet at the same time Yukitaka knew that he was entirely to blame in one fashion or another. The hours he worked and the frustration he encountered more often than not made him short-tempered, especially with the younger, less experienced girls, and the other doctors who worked his clinic were quick to point it out to him.

Not that Yukitaka minded the distance he had created like a moat around himself. He had his own reasons for remaining aloof.

The nature of his research was delicate to say the least, and not only because he knew the medical community would see it as eccentric and a waste of their money. Even members of his staff would have deemed him a lunatic if they knew what he was really working on; and if in fact his efforts ever bore fruit, anyone who had ever assisted him on it in any way would clamor for a piece of the profits and the glory, whether they deserved it or not. For that reason, he was loathe to even let his colleagues near his mysterious patient, lest they start asking questions of their own, or even—God forbid—tamper with his specimen.

A _specimen_. . . . Was that all the young man with the strange eyes had become to him?

Yukitaka would have liked to think they had grown close, through all their "conversations" over the years, but he knew that to think as much was a fallacy. Whether the young man heard anything the doctor said to him or not, he never responded, and he continued to periodically attempt suicide by slashing his wrists.

Ironically, however, the more he did this, the less Yukitaka was able to treat him as he would any normal human being. The patient always recovered from his suicide attempts with remarkable speed—sometimes whether the doctor was there to catch it immediately or not. Naturally, at first Yukitaka was afraid of losing the patient each time this happened; but eventually a sort of complacency settled in, in which he began to expect these occurrences every few months as temporary bumps in the road to work patiently through.

And as the years wore on, he found himself gradually hardening to whatever inner torment made the patient cut himself over and over again, his sympathies giving way to a sort of admiration for his pathos and for the machinations of his superhuman body that was more akin to worship. He would painstakingly sketch the young man's eyes, or his half-healed incisions, or the knitting of his tissues under the microscope like some Renaissance painter meditating on the excruciating detail of Christ's wounds. Like Parsifal and his Holy Grail, he was obsessed with finding the secret he knew to be buried somewhere inside his mysterious patient. As he wrote in his private journal, _could it be this person holds the key to—_

But no. That was a fantasy, which Muraki Yukitaka, being a man of science, should have known better than to espouse, even if he, being a man of science, could dream of no greater find than that, impossible as it may seem. No, the words may have felt too much like a rash flight of fancy—that was why he crossed them out as soon as he wrote them—yet he continued to stare at them as though transfixed, unable to help himself, unable to will himself to believe there wasn't somehow some truth to them:

 _Eternal life._

He tore himself away. He sat back and let out his breath, forced himself to look anywhere but back at the page. He closed the journal and removed his glasses, and polished them with his handkerchief just to give himself time to think, to be rational.

But was he not already being perfectly rational?

The fact of the matter was, the idea of finding a key to eternal life was only considered a myth because no one had yet done it. The scientific proof did not yet exist. If he could get proof, Yukitaka could change all that. He could stop mankind from aging, from contracting disease and suffering. From dying. . . . Yes, if such a thing were possible at all, the young man who had been living in his clinic for five years without food or water was living proof.

It may have been in his blood, in his tissues—locked up in the genetic code inside his every cell itself. Yukitaka did not yet know. But it amazed him that that young man did not even seem to care that he enjoyed such a unique, indeed privileged, place among creation.

At least he did not seem to mind, either, that the doctor was drawing his blood in order to understand that unique place. To Yukitaka, the greater crime was letting what knowledge he could bring the field of medicine go to waste, and thus he was determined not to let his patient's existence be in vain. He was not a superstitious man, but he would not have become a doctor if he did not believe in the notion that a person could be born to answer a higher calling. For all he knew, he had been meant to find this young man—that his struggle to define himself as a doctor had been merely a preamble to the discovery of that patient on his doorstep. If it meant the answer to his quest would not reveal itself for five years or for fifty, what right did he have to complain when his destiny had already been so clearly decided? Not many individuals ever even knew what they were meant to do, and even fewer ever came into possession of a secret that had the potential to heal all of mankind of its one inevitable condition: death.

Perhaps, too, the likes of that young man were not meant to exist in this world. That thought did occur to Yukitaka on more than one occasion. But if anything it only made him more determined. If in fact there were a Creator, he reasoned, who had made living things mortal, then this act of science's rebellion was no less than what He deserved for such a flawed creation. Despite his profession, Yukitaka would hardly call himself a humanist. No, if he were perfectly honest, had his research only one goal, it was not to better mankind so much as to beat Death at its own game.

* * *

"What were you thinking? How could you be so careless, you idiot? The doctor's told you time and time again not to let the patient have access to anything that could be used as a weapon!"

And the young nurse who had forgotten her pair of small sewing scissors sobbed a half-intelligible apology behind their backs as Yukitaka and his nurses hurried to stop the bleeding from the patient's wrists.

The wounds were self-inflicted, as usual. And as usual, the young nurse who had been sitting with him brought her needlework to keep herself from falling asleep. As soon as she left the room—she claimed she was only out for one minute—he had seized the opportunity, and her scissors. Yukitaka knew it was futile to blame her, even though it had been her fault. No matter how careful they were, it seemed the patient always found _some_ way of slashing his wrists.

"If you're not going to help, then get out! Don't you think you've done enough damage already?" Ms Nakagami shouted at the young nurse—who fled in tears.

She was not so old herself—just eighteen—and had begun her employment in the clinic after the earthquake last September; but this Nakagami Tomoko was not shy about bossing even her seniors around. Not that her reasons for doing so were ever wrong or misguided. Nor were they even hypocritical: she had little in the way of official medical training to speak of, but was a quick study and a perfectionist in everything she set herself to. Yukitaka admired her that; he felt he could trust her to be thorough and discrete; and for that reason, he was strongly considering putting her in charge of the care for this young man.

It was the height of summer, 1924. Already six years had passed since Yukitaka had taken the young man in, and it felt as though this kind of game had been going on from the beginning.

"How long has that man been here, Doctor?" Ms Nakagami asked him after they had patched up the patient.

Yukitaka sighed. "You've been working here almost a year, correct?"

By the way her eyes narrowed, she appeared to know when he was trying to avoid answering her questions.

"I noticed there were older scars on his wrists. They were faint, but there were a lot of them. Has he done this before?"

"You have good eyes, Ms Nakagami. You know that? I rarely have occasion to say that to someone."

"Dr Muraki, if that man has been trying to kill himself all this time, then why do you continue to waste this clinic's resources on keeping him alive?"

Yukitaka knew he would not be able to avoid her questions forever. Like he said, she had good eyes, and he was not referring to her vision. He was well aware his cagey answers would do nothing to satisfy her curiosity, and in fact only make her distrust him more. And while he could not risk losing a nurse with her wit and dedication—especially now that she had her own suspicions about the mysterious patient—could he risk telling her what he knew, and bringing her into the project he had undertaken? He did not doubt she would be strong enough to handle the science or dubious ethics involved—in many ways, she was as cold as he—but she was slightly more ambitious than Yukitaka would have liked. Then again, she had often told him in no unclear terms that she had not gone into nursing for the money or glory.

That afternoon, having made his decision, he took Ms Nakagami aside and begged her discretion. The reason he had provided a room for the young man and kept him in the clinic for six years, Yukitaka told her, despite his seeming eagerness to die, was simply because he wasted none of the clinics resources. He had taken no food or drink and hardly any medication in all the time he had been there, and yet still somehow remained as healthy as he had been when he first arrived.

He disclosed the unusual details of the patient's previous suicide attempts to Ms Nakagami as well. No one else on his staff knew the full extent of what he told her; Yukitaka had been very careful about keeping the patient's miraculous healing abilities under lock and key, and furthermore there were few on staff who had been working for him during the young man's other attempts on his life and were still in his employ.

Eventually, however, he understood that he would have to trust what data he had compiled on the patient so far to another soul for safekeeping, and he wondered if he had found a soul worthy of carrying that heavy burden of trust in Ms Nakagami. At very least she would be an effective go-between on the patient's behalf, a sort of scarecrow with which Yukitaka might stave off unwanted questions from the rest of the staff.

But this severe young woman, who was not prone to be taken in by jokes or superstition, was slow to believe him at first, convinced as she was that the doctor's claims were physically impossible. Laughing, he told her she could forget he ever mentioned it if the cuts on the patient's wrists had not healed over by the next morning.

Needless to say, she was clearly unused to the practice of apologizing.

* * *

And still it continued.

On and on and on, and every time he thought the end was in sight. . . .

Tsuzuki didn't understand why he was allowed to continue to exist, unless it was to be tortured like this for eternity. Was this his punishment for what he did? Or for what he was?

 _Demon. Monster. Murderer._ Their words followed him in an incessant flow, like waves crashing in to shore, chasing after him, lapping at him. Like grasping hands, or flames licking at him—always pulling, tearing, and yet no matter how hard they tried to bring him down, no matter now hard he tried to destroy himself like they wanted and put an end to this hellish cycle, somehow he always managed to slip away.

Well, he'd done it this time. If they wanted his blood, they could have it. His veins were wide open. And the eyes they reviled him for, those unnatural eyes that only proved to everyone who saw him that he should not exist, that he should never have been born let alone been allowed to live—he'd taken care of that, too.

So why wouldn't they just leave him alone and let him go?

"He's lost too much blood. . . . How long has he been like this?"

 _Answer the question! What did you do?_

. . . And he's back in that village, standing over the corpse of a boy he once knew, with a face he once trusted and loved, and flames are flickering over dead eyes, making them glow a familiar shade of crimson. The faceless forms standing around him are streaked with blood, the scent of decaying roses hanging heavy in an evening sky so red it sets the couple of moths that float by aflame, and they just keep beating their wings, oblivious to it even as they're being burnt up—

"Doctor!"

"Quiet. He always comes back. You know that."

* * *

Ms Nakagami glared at him from where she knelt at the patient's side. She waited until the nurse beside her had turned away to dispose of the basin of bloody water before she hissed back at him with all her frustration, "And what if this is the one time he doesn't?"

That was simply impossible. But what good would it do Yukitaka to try explaining that to her now, that this young man could not die? That was the beauty of the unique creature that he was. There was almost nothing he could do to himself that would cause him to die.

Yet even the doctor could not deny that the damage he had inflicted was notably more severe than any previous attempt. This time the patient had not only slit his wrists, he had also tried to gouge out his right eye. Fortunately, the wound had not been deep enough to penetrate his brain—which Yukitaka had little doubt would have been fatal despite all his powers of regeneration—though the mere fact that he had stabbed himself in the eye was a clear indication that something had changed from his patient's earlier, almost ritualistic suicide attempts. If he were not trying to kill himself with such an act of mutilation, however, then what was the reason? Had he done it thinking it would ensure he would no longer have to see whatever visions were responsible for keeping him awake day after day? But he had slashed his wrists as well, so he had been hoping to die anyway. Could it be that hatred was to blame for turning his hand against his own unusual eyes?

To the Muraki Yukitaka of five or six years ago, perhaps such a violent display of self-loathing would have garnered his admiration and pity. Now, however, it angered and frustrated him. Did the young man not understand what he could do for Yukitaka—what he could do for the world? It was selfish of him, to say the least, to show such utter disregard for a body that was, in all ways the doctor could think of, perfect. If Yukitaka did not know better—if he was not already convinced of the patient's one-track mind—he would say his patient was doing this to spite him.

"I'm hooking him up to an intravenous drip," Ms Nakagami told him with a sigh.

"That won't be necessary. He'll heal on his own just like all the other times. You'll see."

"Then just to be safe. That was a lot more blood than usual, Doctor."

But even as he argued with her, Yukitaka sounded to his own ears like a madman, his fervor and blind certainty just a bit too religious for a man who claimed allegiance to no faith but science. Consciously, he knew just as well as she did that he was letting pride get the better of his logic and judgment, but that same pride would not allow him to admit it.

That was 5 January 1926, the patient's first suicide attempt of the year.

A week later he was in a coma.

Yukitaka was at a loss as to how to explain it. The young man had recovered from so many attempts over the years almost without outside help, his wounds healing over before they had even had a proper chance to bleed; but now it was days before the sinews of his wrists could be seen to be knitting back together, and the damage to his eye remained almost as fresh as when he had stabbed it. Yukitaka worried it might be gone for good.

Ordinarily he would have seen this slow, steady improvement as a sign the patient was healing well and avoiding infection. But that young man was in no ways ordinary, and the fact that it took him longer than a few days to recover completely was plenty cause for worry. He would have said the violence of this particular attempt meant the young man was growing desperate, if it had not been for the desperation that had infused the entirety of his silent, eight-year-long residence in the clinic.

There was nothing tangible to indicate it, but something told Yukitaka he might actually lose his patient.

Strange how five, six years ago he would have been prepared for it, even seen it as inevitable the way the patient was going. Now it frightened him like nothing else.

It was not even the thought of losing an invaluable specimen or what advancements might be made while the young man still lived that troubled him so. It was as though, seeing the patient in such a sorry, fragile condition, Yukitaka were staring his own mortality in the face. If such a person as this could be allowed to die, then what hope was there for any of the human race, let alone a scientist such as himself?

He could not be sure if it were the need to immortalize that fact or the sudden realization that the young man might not be around much longer that compelled Yukitaka to take his picture. Then again, it might have been for reasons as simple as the grace and beauty of his anguish, or the seductive, almost worshipful way in which the clear light of that winter afternoon illuminated his features.

His Eastman sat on the bedside table, the photograph secure within it, waiting for development. The young man had seemed so otherworldly in that golden light, and unusually fragile with the rubber tubes that kept him alive snaking out from under his robe, the fresh bandages over his eye barely whiter than his pale skin, his dark hair in a fine disarray from when Yukitaka laid him back down against the pillow after changing the dressing. The black and white film would not pick up the queer purple of his good eye, shining like a dark red wine in the angle of the light; but it would hold for all posterity the agony in its depth, the quiet melancholy in his slightly parted lips, the relief of sinew and clavicle through the delicate skin of his throat, as though he were only breaths away from death.

Of course, Yukitaka knew his patient was much more resilient than he looked, but at the same time there was no way he could guarantee the young man would remain with him forever. He would continue to do everything in his power to keep the young man alive, for as long as possible; but should anything happen to him, then if nothing else, that photograph would prove that he existed.

It would prove that this impossible person had actually existed.

* * *

The throne room of the Great King Enma, lord and judge of the land of the dead, was a place the Count could never quite accustom himself to. Perhaps it was something to do with the bodiless heads that sat at the foot of his dais, whose eyes and nose respectively scrutinized every soul who bowed down before it; or something to do with the mirror behind the king himself, which reflected back all the sins of the one who peered into it.

Perhaps, too, it was the simple fact that it was a place for the souls of the dead, and the Count by nature was more concerned with the souls of the living. In fact, that was what called him here at Enma's behest: one particular soul the demon king should have claimed for his own long ago, but for reasons unknown to him, the man was still living.

"Count. . . ." For such a seemingly slight frame, his low voice rumbled throughout the chamber so that the Count felt more than heard each nuanced, achingly slow word: "It has come to my attention that some unknown force is artificially prolonging the life of one Tsuzuki Asato. For the past seven and a half years he has been living in a self-induced catatonia with neither food nor water, during which time he has made multiple attempts at suicide—each time in vain. I have ordered an investigation into the cause of his continued life, in order to root out any tampering with the souls of the living that might be taking place on our end, but we could save our shinigami valuable time and effort if anyone in our employ had information that might make better sense of this matter."

In other words, the Count thought, he stood as good as accused. Better to come clean now than wait for the facts to be revealed in all their unpleasantness. "I take full responsibility, my lord."

"You take responsibility?"

"Yes. It was I keeping his flame going in the Castle of Candles. No need to waste valuable resources on an investigation when I freely admit my guilt. And I expect to be punished for my actions. But let the record show I do not regret taking them."

"Is that so? And what reason could you possibly give me for justifying this behavior?"

What reason, indeed. But that he would take with him to the grave, if the likes of him were even allowed an end to their services. "I don't expect my reasoning to make logical sense to this court, my lord," the Count said. "But suffice it to say he is . . ." _Precious to me? All I have left?_ No, he could not say that. . . . "A source of some fascination for me."

Enma leaned forward in his seat—just a slight movement for the king, but possessing in it all the skepticism the Count feared. That was why he hated this place: here he was transparent.

"If he were so fascinating," said the demon king, "then is that why you allow him to suffer?"

"I do not know, my lord."

"The court demands the reason you have taken such unusual interest in this individual. Do you have information about this Tsuzuki Asato that would complicate his trial?"

"Whatever information I have is privileged by my position, my lord."

"Not when he dies, it is not. Then he becomes _my_ business."

He was backed into a corner now, the Count knew. As did the demon lord's attendants. They stood still and silent in their king's presence, but he could sense their eyes on him, judging him as if he were a mortal soul, hungry for the sins he kept hidden deep within himself. No doubt that was why he was here, rather than discussing these matters in a private conference with Enma as should have been his right. This was a public humiliation. They all knew what their king thought of the Count. They were already convinced of his guilt and were hoping he would slip up. But it was a matter of life and death that he did not—his life, or what semblance of it he enjoyed, and Tsuzuki's.

Already on his knees, the Count prostrated himself before the throne.

"With your permission, my lord," he said, making certain everyone would hear him clearly, "I would like to strike a bargain."

"A bargain? For this human's soul? You forget your place, Count. You know I could simply order you to cede control of his flame to me and my ministry."

Yet even as he said so, the Count could hear the smile in Enma's tone of voice. He showed great temerity trying to deal with the judge of the dead for a mere soul, but even gods must tire of their rule never being tested. And, though Enma may have only sensed it thus far, this was no mere human soul they discussed. He acquiesced: "But let us hear what this _bargain_ of yours would entail. Do you mean to suggest to me that you would let Tsuzuki's soul go if your conditions were met?"

"Only one condition, your honor. A simple request, really."

"And that is?"

"When Tsuzuki Asato dies, his soul will not continue on but will remain here in Enma-cho, to be instated in your lordship's service as a shinigami."

A murmur passed around the throne room, but from the the throne itself, silence. The Count looked up then, to see the slightest of scowls on the demon king's otherwise unmoved visage.

"You are aware I decide a soul's worthiness to become a shinigami."

"I am aware of what kind of characters, what kind of histories and crimes factor into your honor's decision. I do not pretend to know this Tsuzuki's sins, but I do know that he has potential. So much potential, my lord. It is that which caught my attention and drew me to him in the first place."

The last part was not a complete truth, but the Count was practiced enough in opacity it might as well have been. What did Enma need to know of the reason for Tsuzuki's potential, or his heritage? Why dredge those old crimes—his own crimes—up from out of the dark in which they deserved to remain buried? Those facts were not relevant to these proceedings.

Nor was it relevant why the Count wanted Tsuzuki to remain in Meifu. It would be dangerous for both of them if the demon king were ever to suspect the bond they shared, and the deep nature of it. It was the Count who violated Meifu's rules more than two and a half decades ago, so much more so than what he was admitting to now; but if the truth were ever revealed, it was Tsuzuki who would bear the brunt of the punishment, though he bore none of the blame for what he was. No, simply keeping him in Meifu was opening them both to great enough risk.

But it was a risk that the Count had to take. Though it might have been selfish of him, it was only natural for him to cling to that young man, if only Enma knew the reasons. It was within his rights to want Tsuzuki here.

"He possesses powers far superior to those of most human individuals, which would serve my lord and this administration well, if they were properly nurtured," he continued, as though it were the only motive he could possibly have. "It would truly be a shame to waste them."

A long moment went by in which Enma remained silent and impassive; until at last he sat back, and said, "Very well, Count. If you release your hold on Tsuzuki's soul, I give you my word I will have him tested upon arrival for the position of a shinigami. Whether he succeeds or fails from that point on shall be his own doing."

The Count pressed his forehead to the floor once again, more out of relief than out of the gratitude that he expressed. What he did not say was that whatever hold Enma thought he had as the Count of the candles over Tsuzuki's soul was almost nonexistent; he was responsible, but not in the ways his lord suspected. No, he did not think the young man would fail.

His only hope was that Tsuzuki might forgive him, for denying him the oblivion he appeared to crave so badly. God knew he wanted nothing more than to save Tsuzuki; although in doing so, the Count might have damned him forever.

* * *

Yukitaka tried everything.

He had closed the wound and exhausted every method he could think of to start the patient's heart again, he even had the tubes for a transfusion out and ready. With shirtsleeves rolled up, the veins bulging in his forearms, he was prepared to drain his own blood if he thought it would make an ounce of difference now. . . .

The tubes fell from his hand to roll on the floor like snakes as he finally gave up, sinking to the edge of the bed, a shaky hand running through his hair.

"Eight years," he heard himself say. The nurses stood around at a loss—they at least had had the sense to give up long ago—staring at him with worried expressions on their faces, but the words weren't for their benefit. "Eight years and what good does it do me now? Nothing. . . . Bloody _nothing!_ "

The syllables shot through his teeth like a gritted curse. He was still unable to believe it. Every careful note he had made of the patient over the last eight years, every accommodation of his malady, every mad-dash effort made to save him from his spats of self-destruction would not allow Yukitaka to believe it, even if the lack of a pulse under his fingers as he checked for what must have been the hundredth time told it plain:

The patient was gone.

The trails of blood over his gown and the side of the bed, the slick pools of it the wooden floor, were the only sign of the life Yukitaka was certain even now he had just barely missed. The wounds that had barely healed from his last attempt were ripped open again—and again, the patient counting on multiple incisions to make sure he accomplished his goal this time. No one knew how long he had lain like that without help, the life slowly draining out of him. Once upon a time, it seemed, it wouldn't have mattered; but whatever magic his cells had worked to repair themselves in the past was over and done, as if they too had simply given up the fight.

A late-winter's snow was falling outside the window, the wan winter light casting away the shadows inside the room. It made the young man's skin look as cold and white as the ground outside, but not nearly as dead. Not nearly as dead as it should have. He kept expecting those purple eyes to reopen at any moment, to stare their blank stare at the ceiling as they had so many nights he came just to talk to the young man. Beneath the half-moon of his eyelashes, the faintest sheen of sweat still glistened on his cheek, even if his lips were fast losing their color. They never had much to begin with; and the breath that passed through them these past eight years should have been impossible without the food or drink he never took. If he had not died then, why should he die now? That was all Yukitaka wanted answered.

And now whatever answer may have been only a day away from discovery—the secret to eternal life itself—had died with him. To say it was a pity was a gross understatement. A travesty. . . . That was somewhat closer to the mark.

At least Yukitaka still had the blood and tissue samples that were safe back in his office, not to mention his copious, careful notes. Surely there was still some new knowledge to be gleaned from them.

But as he found himself unable to tear his gaze away from that pale face, perfect even in death, he understood what a truly minuscule measure of consolation that was.

* * *

White was falling.

That was the first hint of his surroundings that Tsuzuki could distinguish. Through a hazy field of vision, the world appeared soft and white, as though the heavens themselves were falling gently to earth, piece by piece. . . .

Snow. That must have been it. He remembered now, if only just vaguely: it had started snowing that morning, and it never stopped. It had been snowing as he lay in his bed in the clinic, and he'd watched each fat flake drift down as he felt himself growing colder and colder, like they were all sinking into him, and he had welcomed them with open arms—

Tears welled up in his eyes, drowning out that vision and the memory, and the sting of them was so sudden he couldn't help pressing the heels of his hands to his eyelids for some relief. He barely managed to bite back a cry before it even occurred to him why he was so upset.

He was back in that clinic in Tokyo. That was it. It hadn't worked. That time had been his final effort and it hadn't worked at all. They brought him back—somehow—they brought him back after everything he'd done to ensure they wouldn't, after everything he had done to make it clear he wanted to just _not be_ , and he was going to have to go on living like that, with the hunger, with the memories, torturing him every second of every day, driving him mad, no, so far past all sense of madness he just couldn't stand it, didn't anyone _care_ , couldn't they just let him die, couldn't they see that was the only thing he wanted, that he was _suffering_ , but goddamn it, it should have worked, he didn't understand why it should still be this way, why he couldn't even manage to kill himself. . . .

Until he realized: the whiteness that was falling outside the window was not of snow, but the petals of cherry blossoms, caught on the breeze. But it was the wrong season for them. Not only that, but he was sure the window was on the wrong side of the bed. Had they moved him to a different room in the clinic, or a different location altogether? He was in a hospital bed and gown, but not those that he last remembered. And he would have known in an instant—with a touch or a single intake of breath. Their feel, the exact scent of them, of that clinic, were a part of him. After all, he had spent every minute of the last eight years in them.

A knock at the door would not allow him to dwell on that thought for long. He pulled the robe and bedsheets tighter around himself and himself into a sitting position so that he might be prepared for whoever it was on the other side.

Rather than the doctor or nurse he was expecting, a middle-aged gentleman entered, dressed in a suit and tie, with an expression on his face that was thrice as somber as either. Tsuzuki had never seen him before, nor could he guess what his purpose here was, but if he knew one thing it was that this was not the doctor from that Tokyo clinic.

"I'm glad to see you're awake," the man said gruffly, seemingly oblivious to Tsuzuki's confusion. "I hope you'll forgive me if I seem like I'm rushing things. Normally I would give those who are newly put in my charge a little more time to adapt to their surroundings, but my superiors seem to be of the opinion that you would be up for this even in your present condition. And these orders did come from remarkably high up. You—or so I have been told—are a special case. Unique. I don't presume to know anything about that, but I can say that the fact you appear to be conscious is a step in the right direction."

The strange man said all this while moving to the window, looking outside, and picking a stray thread off of the breast of his jacket, as though he weren't speaking to Tsuzuki at all but some other unseen occupant of the room.

That was, until he turned suddenly, and said, rather pointedly, "You are conscious, aren't you?"

It didn't seem to Tsuzuki that there was any denying that fact. His eyes were open, red-rimmed and blinking, and he was sitting up against the headboard of his bed. Still, he did not answer; and when the strange man smiled as though at a private joke, it seemed he had not needed to.

"Do you remember your name?" the man asked.

"Tsuzuki Asato."

Tsuzuki started. His own name had come out of him as though drawn out. After so many years without having said a word, speech should have felt awkward, his tongue and throat struggling to form the correct syllables from lack of use; but reality was quite the opposite.

Heart suddenly racing, he raised his hands and turned them over, palms upwards, to see the thick, jagged ridges of old scar tissue that crisscrossed each wrist.

It should not have been possible. He was sure he had done the job properly that last time. Had he really been unconscious so long his wounds had already healed? He could see out of his right eye again as well, his vision unaffected. . . . But no, this must have been a dream, merely a precursor to the oblivion that awaited him—anything but a sign that he was still alive. But he had not dreamed since . . . He couldn't even remember the last time he had dreamed. And somehow, the terror and confusion that suddenly seized him with a very visceral nausea felt a little too real for a body that had been so numb for the past eight long years.

He was suddenly and inexplicably afraid of the answer he would get—and who might overhear his question—but it was a natural imperative, he had to ask: "Where am I?"

The strange man stared at him a moment longer before moving away from the window. Perhaps Tsuzuki had only imagined it, but he thought he saw something different cross those otherwise indifferent eyes—pity maybe, or else some vague recollection of a similar time long past and barely remembered, long before that man ever worked his way up the bureaucratic ladder to become chief of the Summons Division, in this little section of the government of the land of the dead.

But Tsuzuki knew none of that, and his voice seemed just as cold as before as the man made his way around to the side of the bed.

"Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"


End file.
